The Project Gutenberg EBook of Val d'Arno, by John Ruskin
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Title: Val d'Arno
Author: John Ruskin
Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8523]
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VAL D'ARNO
By John Ruskin, M.A.
CONTENTS
VAL D'ARNO
LECTURE I. NICHOLAS THE PISAN.
LECTURE II. JOHN THE PISAN.
LECTURE III. SHIELD AND APRON.
LECTURE IV. PARTED PER PALE.
LECTURE V. PAX VOBISCUM.
LECTURE VI. MARBLE COUCHANT.
LECTURE VII. MARBLE RAMPANT.
LECTURE VIII. FRANCHISE.
LECTURE IX. THE TYRRHENE SEA.
LECTURE X. FLEUR DE LYS.
APPENDIX. (NOTES ON THE PLATES ILLUSTRATING THIS
VOLUME.)
LIST OF PLATES.
(There are no illustrations in this edition)
THE ANCIENT SHORES OF ARNO
I. THE PISAN LATONA
II. NICCOLA PISANO'S PULPIT
III. THE FOUNTAIN OF PERUGIA
IV. NORMAN IMAGERY
V. DOOR OF THE BAPTISTERY. PISA
VI. THE STORY OF ST. JOHN. ADVENT
VII. " " " " " DEPARTURE
VIII. "THE CHARGE TO ADAM" GIOVANNI PISANO
IX. " " " 『 MODERN ITALIAN
X. THE NATIVITY. GIOVANNI PISANO
XI. 』 " MODERN ITALIAN
XII. THE ANNUNCIATION AND VISITATION
VAL D'ARNO
TEN LECTURES
ON
THE TUSCAN ART DIRECTLY ANTECEDENT TO THE FLORENTINE YEAR OF VICTORIES
GIVEN BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD IN MICHAELMAS TERM, 1873
LECTURE I. NICHOLAS THE PISAN.
1. On this day, of this month, the 20th of October, six hundred and
twenty-three years ago, the merchants and tradesmen of Florence met before
the church of Santa Croce; marched through the city to the palace of their
Podesta; deposed their Podesta; set over themselves, in his place, a
knight belonging to an inferior city; called him "Captain of the People;"
appointed under him a Signory of twelve Ancients chosen from among
themselves; hung a bell for him on the tower of the Lion, that he might
ring it at need, and gave him the flag of Florence to bear, half white,
and half red.
The first blow struck upon the bell in that tower of the Lion began the
tolling for the passing away of the feudal system, and began the joy-peal,
or carillon, for whatever deserves joy, in that of our modern liberties,
whether of action or of trade.
2. Within the space of our Oxford term from that day, namely, on the 13th
of December in the same year, 1250, died, at Ferentino, in Apulia, the
second Frederick, Emperor of Germany; the second also of the two great
lights which in his lifetime, according to Dante's astronomy, ruled the
world,—whose light being quenched, "the land which was once the
residence of courtesy and valour, became the haunt of all men who are
ashamed to be near the good, or to speak to them."
"In sul paese chadice e po riga
solea valore e cortesia trovar si
prima che federigo Bavessi briga,
or puo sicuramente indi passarsi
per qualuuche lasciassi per vergogna
di ragionar co buoni, e appressarsi."
PURO., Cant. 16.
3. The "Paese che Adice e Po riga" is of course Lombardy; and might have
been enough distinguished by the name of its principal river. But Dante
has an especial reason for naming the Adige. It is always by the valley of
the Adige that the power of the German Caesars descends on Italy; and that
battlemented bridge, which doubtless many of you remember, thrown over the
Adige at Verona, was so built that the German riders might have secure and
constant access to the city. In which city they had their first stronghold
in Italy, aided therein by the great family of the Montecchi, Montacutes,
Mont-aigu-s, or Montagues; lords, so called, of the mountain peaks; in
feud with the family of the Cappelletti,—hatted, or, more properly,
scarlet-hatted, persons. And this accident of nomenclature, assisted by
your present familiar knowledge of the real contests of the sharp
mountains with the flat caps, or petasoi, of cloud, (locally giving Mont
Pilate its title, "Pileatus,") may in many points curiously illustrate for
you that contest of Frederick the Second with Innocent the Fourth, which
in the good of it and the evil alike, represents to all time the war of
the solid, rational, and earthly authority of the King, and State, with
the more or less spectral, hooded, imaginative, and nubiform authority of
the Pope, and Church.
4. It will be desirable also that you clearly learn the material
relations, governing spiritual ones,—as of the Alps to their clouds,
so of the plains to their rivers. And of these rivers, chiefly note the
relation to each other, first, of the Adige and Po; then of the Arno and
Tiber. For the Adige, representing among the rivers and fountains of
waters the channel of Imperial, as the Tiber of the Papal power, and the
strength of the Coronet being founded on the white peaks that look down
upon Hapsburg and Hohenzollern, as that of the Scarlet Cap in the marsh of
the Campagna, "quo tenuis in sicco aqua destituisset," the study of the
policies and arts of the cities founded in the two great valleys of
Lombardy and Tuscany, so far as they were affected by their bias to the
Emperor, or the Church, will arrange itself in your minds at once in a
symmetry as clear as it will be, in our future work, secure and
suggestive.
5. "Tenuis, in sicco." How literally the words apply, as to the native
streams, so to the early states or establishings of the great cities of
the world. And you will find that the policy of the Coronet, with its
tower-building; the policy of the Hood, with its dome-building; and the
policy of the bare brow, with its cot-building,—the three main
associations of human energy to which we owe the architecture of our
earth, (in contradistinction to the dens and caves of it,)—are
curiously and eternally governed by mental laws, corresponding to the
physical ones which are ordained for the rocks, the clouds, and the
streams.
The tower, which many of you so well remember the daily sight of, in your
youth, above the "winding shore" of Thames,—the tower upon the hill
of London; the dome which still rises above its foul and terrestrial
clouds; and the walls of this city itself, which has been "alma,"
nourishing in gentleness, to the youth of England, because defended from
external hostility by the difficultly fordable streams of its plain, may
perhaps, in a few years more, be swept away as heaps of useless stone; but
the rocks, and clouds, and rivers of our country will yet, one day,
restore to it the glory of law, of religion, and of life.
6. I am about to ask you to read the hieroglyphs upon the architecture of
a dead nation, in character greatly resembling our own,—in laws and
in commerce greatly influencing our own;—in arts, still, from her
grave, tutress of the present world. I know that it will be expected of me
to explain the merits of her arts, without reference to the wisdom of her
laws; and to describe the results of both, without investigating the
feelings which regulated either. I cannot do this; but I will at once end
these necessarily vague, and perhaps premature, generalizations; and only
ask you to study some portions of the life and work of two men, father and
son, citizens of the city in which the energies of this great people were
at first concentrated; and to deduce from that study the conclusions, or
follow out the inquiries, which it may naturally suggest.
7. It is the modern fashion to despise Vasari. He is indeed despicable,
whether as historian or critic,—not least in his admiration of
Michael Angelo; nevertheless, he records the traditions and opinions of
his day; and these you must accurately know, before you can wisely
correct. I will take leave, therefore, to begin to-day with a sentence
from Vasari, which many of you have often heard quoted, but of which,
perhaps, few have enough observed the value.
﹃Niccola Pisano finding himself under certain Greek sculptors who were
carving the figures and other intaglio ornaments of the cathedral of Pisa,
and of the temple of St. John, and there being, among many spoils of
marbles, brought by the Pisan fleet, {1} some ancient tombs, there was one
among the others most fair, on which was sculptured the hunting of
Meleager.﹄{2}
{Footnote 1: "Armata." The proper word for a land army is "esercito."}
{Footnote 2: Vol. i., p. 60, of Mrs. Foster's English translation, to
which I shall always refer, in order that English students may compare the
context if they wish. But the pieces of English which I give are my own
direct translation, varying, it will be found, often, from Mrs. Foster's,
in minute, but not unimportant, particulars.}
Get the meaning and contents of this passage well into your minds. In the
gist of it, it is true, and very notable.
8. You are in mid thirteenth century; 1200-1300. The Greek nation has been
dead in heart upwards of a thousand years; its religion dead, for six
hundred. But through the wreck of its faith, and death in its heart, the
skill of its hands, and the cunning of its design, instinctively linger.
In the centuries of Christian power, the Christians are still unable to
build but under Greek masters, and by pillage of Greek shrines; and their
best workman is only an apprentice to the 'Graeculi esurientes' who are
carving the temple of St. John.
9. Think of it. Here has the New Testament been declared for 1200 years.
No spirit of wisdom, as yet, has been given to its workmen, except that
which has descended from the Mars Hill on which St. Paul stood
contemptuous in pity. No Bezaleel arises, to build new tabernacles, unless
he has been taught by Daedalus.
10. It is necessary, therefore, for you first to know precisely the manner
of these Greek masters in their decayed power; the manner which Vasari
calls, only a sentence before, "That old Greek manner, blundering,
disproportioned,"—Goffa, e sproporzionata.
"Goffa," the very word which Michael Angelo uses of Perugino. Behold, the
Christians despising the Dunce Greeks, as the Infidel modernists despise
the Dunce Christians. {1}
{Footnote 1: Compare "Ariadne Floreutina," § 46.}
11. I sketched for you, when I was last at Pisa, a few arches of the apse
of the duomo, and a small portion of the sculpture of the font of the
Temple of St. John. I have placed them in your rudimentary series, as
examples of "quella vecchia maniera Greca, goffa e sproporzionata." My own
judgment respecting them is,—and it is a judgment founded on
knowledge which you may, if you choose, share with me, after working with
me,—that no architecture on this grand scale, so delicately skilful
in execution, or so daintily disposed in proportion, exists elsewhere in
the world.
12. Is Vasari entirely wrong then?
No, only half wrong, but very fatally half wrong. There are Greeks, and
Greeks.
This head with the inlaid dark iris in its eyes, from the font of St.
John, is as pure as the sculpture of early Greece, a hundred years before
Phidias; and it is so delicate, that having drawn with equal care this and
the best work of the Lombardi at Venice (in the church of the Miracoli), I
found this to possess the more subtle qualities of design. And yet, in the
cloisters of St. John Lateran at Rome, you have Greek work, if not
contemporary with this at Pisa, yet occupying a parallel place in the
history of architecture, which is abortive, and monstrous beyond the power
of any words to describe. Vasari knew no difference between these two
kinds of Greek work. Nor do your modern architects. To discern the
difference between the sculpture of the font of Pisa, and the spandrils of
the Lateran cloister, requires thorough training of the hand in the finest
methods of draughtsmanship; and, secondly, trained habit of reading the
mythology and ethics of design. I simply assure you of the fact at
present; and if you work, you may have sight and sense of it.
13. There are Greeks, and Greeks, then, in the twelfth century, differing
as much from each other as vice, in all ages, must differ from virtue. But
in Vasari's sight they are alike; in ours, they must be so, as far as
regards our present purpose. As men of a school, they are to be summed
under the general name of 'Byzantines;' their work all alike showing
specific characters of attenuate, rigid, and in many respects offensively
unbeautiful, design, to which Vasari's epithets of﹃goffa, e
sproporzionata﹄are naturally applied by all persons trained only in
modern principles. Under masters, then, of this Byzantine race, Niccola is
working at Pisa.
14. Among the spoils brought by her fleets from Greece, is a sarcophagus,
with Meleager's hunt on it, wrought "con bellissima maniera," says Vasari.
You may see that sarcophagus—any of you who go to Pisa;—touch
it, for it is on a level with your hand; study it, as Niccola studied it,
to your mind's content. Within ten yards of it, stand equally accessible
pieces of Niccola's own work and of his son's. Within fifty yards of it,
stands the Byzantine font of the chapel of St. John. Spend but the good
hours of a single day quietly by these three pieces of marble, and you may
learn more than in general any of you bring home from an entire tour in
Italy. But how many of you ever yet went into that temple of St. John,
knowing what to look for; or spent as much time in the Campo Santo of
Pisa, as you do in Mr. Ryman's shop on a rainy day?
15. The sarcophagus is not, however, (with Vasari's pardon) in 'bellissima
maniera' by any means. But it is in the classical Greek manner instead of
the Byzantine Greek manner. You have to learn the difference between
these.
Now I have explained to you sufficiently, in "Aratra Pentelici," what the
classical Greek manner is. The manner and matter of it being easily summed—as
those of natural and unaffected life;—nude life when nudity is right
and pure; not otherwise. To Niccola, the difference between this natural
Greek school, and the Byzantine, was as the difference between the bull of
Thurium and of Delhi, (see Plate 19 of "Aratra Pentelici").
Instantly he followed the natural fact, and became the Father of Sculpture
to Italy.
16. Are we, then, also to be strong by following the natural fact?
Yes, assuredly. That is the beginning and end of all my teaching to you.
But the noble natural fact, not the ignoble. You are to study men; not
lice nor entozoa. And you are to study the souls of men in their bodies,
not their bodies only. Mulready's drawings from the nude are more degraded
and bestial than the worst grotesques of the Byzantine or even the Indian
image makers. And your modern mob of English and American tourists,
following a lamplighter through the Vatican to have pink light thrown for
them on the Apollo Belvidere, are farther from capacity of understanding
Greek art, than the parish charity boy, making a ghost out of a turnip,
with a candle inside.
17. Niccola followed the facts, then. He is the Master of Naturalism in
Italy. And I have drawn for you his lioness and cubs, to fix that in your
minds. And beside it, I put the Lion of St. Mark's, that you may see
exactly the kind of change he made. The Lion of St. Mark's (all but his
wings, which have been made and fastened on in the fifteenth century), is
in the central Byzantine manner; a fine decorative piece of work,
descending in true genealogy from the Lion of Nemea, and the crested skin
of him that clothes the head of the Heracles of Camarina. It has all the
richness of Greek Daedal work,—nay, it has fire and life beyond much
Greek Daedal work; but in so far as it is non-natural, symbolic,
decorative, and not like an actual lion, it would be felt by Niccola
Pisano to be imperfect. And instead of this decorative evangelical
preacher of a lion, with staring eyes, and its paw on a gospel, he carves
you a quite brutal and maternal lioness, with affectionate eyes, and paw
set on her cub.
18. Fix that in your minds, then. Niccola Pisano is the Master of
Naturalism in Italy,—therefore elsewhere; of Naturalism, and all
that follows. Generally of truth, common-sense, simplicity, vitality,—and
of all these, with consummate power. A man to be enquired about, is not
he? and will it not make a difference to you whether you look, when you
travel in Italy, in his rough early marbles for this fountain of life, or
only glance at them because your Murray's Guide tells you,—and think
them "odd old things"?
19. We must look for a moment more at one odd old thing—the
sarcophagus which was his tutor. Upon it is carved the hunting of
Meleager; and it was made, or by tradition received as, the tomb of the
mother of the Countess Matilda. I must not let you pass by it without
noticing two curious coincidences in these particulars. First, in the
Greek subject which is given Niccola to read.
The boar, remember, is Diana's enemy. It is sent upon the fields of
Calydon in punishment of the refusal of the Calydonians to sacrifice to
her. 'You have refused me,' she said; 'you will not have Artemis
Laphria, Forager Diana, to range in your fields. You shall have the
Forager Swine, instead.'
Meleager and Atalanta are Diana's servants,—servants of all order,
purity, due sequence of season, and time. The orbed architecture of
Tuscany, with its sculptures of the succession of the labouring months, as
compared with the rude vaults and monstrous imaginations of the past, was
again the victory of Meleager.
20. Secondly, take what value there is in the tradition that this
sarcophagus was made the tomb of the mother of the
{Illustration: PLATE I:—THE PISAN LATONA. Angle of Panel of the
Adoration, in Niccola's Pulpit.}
Countess Matilda. If you look to the fourteenth chapter of the third
volume of "Modern Painters," you will find the mythic character of the
Countess Matilda, as Dante employed it explained at some length. She is
the representative of Natural Science as opposed to Theological.
21. Chance coincidences merely, these; but full of teaching for us,
looking back upon the past. To Niccola, the piece of marble was,
primarily, and perhaps exclusively, an example of free chiselling, and
humanity of treatment. What else it was to him,—what the spirits of
Atalanta and Matilda could bestow on him, depended on what he was himself.
Of which Vasari tells you nothing. Not whether he was gentleman or clown—rich
or poor—soldier or sailor. Was he never, then, in those fleets that
brought the marbles back from the ravaged Isles of Greece? was he at first
only a labourer's boy among the scaffoldings of the Pisan apse,—his
apron loaded with dust—and no man praising him for his speech? Rough
he was, assuredly; probably poor; fierce and energetic, beyond even the
strain of Pisa,—just and kind, beyond the custom of his age, knowing
the Judgment and Love of God: and a workman, with all his soul and
strength, all his days.
22. You hear the fame of him as of a sculptor only. It is right that you
should; for every great architect must be a sculptor, and be renowned, as
such, more than by his building. But Niccola Pisano had even more
influence on Italy as a builder than as a carver.
For Italy, at this moment, wanted builders more than carvers; and a change
was passing through her life, of which external edifice was a necessary
sign. I complained of you just now that you never looked at the Byzantine
font in the temple of St. John. The sacristan generally will not let you.
He takes you to a particular spot on the floor, and sings a musical chord.
The chord returns in prolonged echo from the chapel roof, as if the
building were all one sonorous marble bell.
Which indeed it is; and travellers are always greatly amused at being
allowed to ring this bell; but it never occurs to them to ask how it came
to be ringable:—how that tintinnabulate roof differs from the dome
of the Pantheon, expands into the dome of Florence, or declines into the
whispering gallery of St. Paul's.
23. When you have had full satisfaction of the tintinnabulate roof, you
are led by the sacristan and Murray to Niccola Pisano's pulpit; which, if
you have spare time to examine it, you find to have six sides, to be
decorated with tablets of sculpture, like the sides of the sarcophagus,
and to be sustained on seven pillars, three of which are themselves
carried on the backs of as many animals.
All this arrangement had been contrived before Niccola's time, and
executed again and again. But behold! between the capitals of the pillars
and the sculptured tablets there are interposed five cusped arches, the
hollow beneath the pulpit showing dark through their foils. You have seen
such cusped arches before, you think?
Yes, gentlemen, you have; but the Pisans had not. And that
intermediate layer of the pulpit means—the change, in a word, for
all Europe, from the Parthenon to Amiens Cathedral. For Italy it means the
rise of her Gothic dynasty; it means the duomo of Milan instead of the
temple of Paestum.
24. I say the duomo of Milan, only to put the change well before your
eyes, because you all know that building so well. The duomo of Milan is of
entirely bad and barbarous Gothic, but the passion of pinnacle and fret is
in it, visibly to you, more than in other buildings. It will therefore
serve to show best what fulness of change this pulpit of Niccola Pisano
signifies.
In it there is no passion of pinnacle nor of fret. You see the edges of
it, instead of being bossed, or knopped, or crocketed, are mouldings of
severest line. No vaulting, no clustered shafts, no traceries, no
fantasies, no perpendicular flights of aspiration. Steady pillars, each of
one polished block; useful capitals, one trefoiled arch between them; your
panel above it; thereon your story of the founder of Christianity. The
whole standing upon beasts, they being indeed the foundation of us, (which
Niccola knew far better than Mr. Darwin); Eagle to carry your Gospel
message—Dove you think it ought to be?
{Illustration: PLATE II.—NICCOLA PISANO'S PULPIT.}
Eagle, says Niccola, and not as symbol of St. John Evangelist only, but
behold! with prey between its claws. For the Gospel, it is Niccola's
opinion, is not altogether a message that you may do whatever you like,
and go straight to heaven. Finally, a slab of marble, cut hollow a little
to bear your book; space enough for you to speak from at ease,—and
here is your first architecture of Gothic Christianity!
25. Indignant thunder of dissent from German doctors,—clamour from
French savants. 'What! and our Treves, and our Strasburg, and our
Poictiers, and our Chartres! And you call this thing the first
architecture of Christianity!' Yes, my French and German friends, very
fine the buildings you have mentioned are; and I am bold to say I love
them far better than you do, for you will run a railroad through any of
them any day that you can turn a penny by it. I thank you also, Germans,
in the name of our Lady of Strasburg, for your bullets and fire; and I
thank you, Frenchmen, in the name of our Lady of Rouen, for your new
haberdashers' shops in the Gothic town;—meanwhile have patience with
me a little, and let me go on.
26. No passion of fretwork, or pinnacle whatever, I said, is in this Pisan
pulpit. The trefoiled arch itself, pleasant as it is, seems forced a
little; out of perfect harmony with the rest (see Plate II.). Unnatural,
perhaps, to Niccola?
Altogether unnatural to him, it is; such a thing never would have come
into his head, unless some one had shown it him. Once got into his head,
he puts it to good use; perhaps even he will let this somebody else put
pinnacles and crockets into his head, or at least, into his son's, in a
little while. Pinnacles,—crockets,—it may be, even traceries.
The ground-tier of the baptistery is round-arched, and has no pinnacles;
but look at its first story. The clerestory of the Duomo of Pisa has no
traceries, but look at the cloister of its Campo Santo.
27. I pause at the words;—for they introduce a new group of
thoughts, which presently we must trace farther.
The Holy Field;—field of burial. The﹃cave of Machpelah which is
before Mamre,﹄of the Pisans. "There they buried Abraham, and Sarah his
wife; there they buried Isaac, and Rebekah his wife; and there I buried
Leah."
How do you think such a field becomes holy,—how separated, as the
resting-place of loving kindred, from that other field of blood, bought to
bury strangers in?
When you have finally succeeded, by your gospel of mammon, in making all
the men of your own nation not only strangers to each other, but enemies;
and when your every churchyard becomes therefore a field of the stranger,
the kneeling hamlet will vainly drink the chalice of God in the midst of
them. The field will be unholy. No cloisters of noble history can ever be
built round such an one.
28. But the very earth of this at Pisa was holy, as you know. That
"armata" of the Tuscan city brought home not only marble and ivory, for
treasure; but earth,—a fleet's burden,—from the place where
there was healing of soul's leprosy: and their field became a place of
holy tombs, prepared for its office with earth from the land made holy by
one tomb; which all the knighthood of Christendom had been pouring out its
life to win.
29. I told you just now that this sculpture of Niccola's was the beginning
of Christian architecture. How do you judge that Christian architecture in
the deepest meaning of it to differ from all other?
All other noble architecture is for the glory of living gods and men; but
this is for the glory of death, in God and man. Cathedral, cloister, or
tomb,—shrine for the body of Christ, or for the bodies of the
saints. All alike signifying death to this world;—life, other than
of this world.
Observe, I am not saying how far this feeling, be it faith, or be it
imagination, is true or false;—I only desire you to note that the
power of all Christian work begins in the niche of the catacomb and depth
of the sarcophagus, and is to the end definable as architecture of the
tomb.
30. Not altogether, and under every condition, sanctioned in doing such
honour to the dead by the Master of it. Not every grave is by His command
to be worshipped. Graves there may be—too little guarded, yet
dishonourable;—"ye are as graves that appear not, and the men that
walk over them are not aware of them." And graves too much guarded, yet
dishonourable,﹃which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but are within
full of all uncleanness.﹄Or graves, themselves honourable, yet which it
may be, in us, a crime to adorn. "For they indeed killed them, and ye
build their sepulchres."
Questions, these, collateral; or to be examined in due time; for the
present it is enough for us to know that all Christian architecture, as
such, has been hitherto essentially of tombs.
It has been thought, gentlemen, that there is a fine Gothic revival in
your streets of Oxford, because you have a Gothic door to your County
Bank:
Remember, at all events, it was other kind of buried treasure, and bearing
other interest, which Niccola Pisano's Gothic was set to guard.
LECTURE II. JOHN THE PISAN.
31. I closed my last lecture with the statement, on which I desired to
give you time for reflection, that Christian architecture was, in its
chief energy, the adornment of tombs,—having the passionate function
of doing honour to the dead.
But there is an ethic, or simply didactic and instructive architecture,
the decoration of which you will find to be normally representative of the
virtues which are common alike to Christian and Greek. And there is a
natural tendency to adopt such decoration, and the modes of design fitted
for it, in civil buildings. {1}
{Footnote: "These several rooms were indicated by symbol and device:
Victory for the soldier, Hope for the exile, the Muses for the poets,
Mercury for the artists, Paradise for the preacher."—(Sagacius
Gazata, of the Palace of Can Grande. I translate only Sismondi's
quotation.)}
32. Civil, or civic, I say, as opposed to military. But
again observe, there are two kinds of military building. One, the robber's
castle, or stronghold, out of which he issues to pillage; the other, the
honest man's castle, or stronghold, into which he retreats from pillage.
They are much like each other in external forms;—but Injustice, or
Unrighteousness, sits in the gate of the one, veiled with forest branches,
(see Giotto's painting of him); and Justice or Righteousness enters
by the gate of the other, over strewn forest branches. Now, for example of
this second kind of military architecture, look at Carlyle's account of
Henry the Fowler, {1} and of his building military towns, or burgs, to
protect his peasantry. In such function you have the first and proper idea
of a walled town,—a place into which the pacific country people can
retire for safety, as the Athenians in the Spartan war. Your fortress of
this kind is a religious and civil fortress, or burg, defended by burgers,
trained to defensive war. Keep always this idea of the proper nature of a
fortified city:—Its walls mean protection,—its gates
hospitality and triumph. In the language familiar to you, spoken of the
chief of cities:﹃Its walls are to be Salvation, and its gates to be
Praise.﹄And recollect always the inscription over the north gate of
Siena: "Cor magis tibi Sena pandit."—"More than her gates, Siena
opens her heart to you."
{Footnote 1: "Frederick," vol. i.}
33. When next you enter London by any of the great lines, I should like
you to consider, as you approach the city, what the feelings of the heart
of London are likely to be on your approach, and at what part of the
railroad station an inscription, explaining such state of her heart, might
be most fitly inscribed. Or you would still better understand the
difference between ancient and modern principles of architecture by taking
a cab to the Elephant and Castle, and thence walking to London Bridge by
what is in fact the great southern entrance of London. The only gate
receiving you is, however, the arch thrown over the road to carry the
South-Eastern Railway itself; and the only exhibition either of Salvation
or Praise is in the cheap clothes' shops on each side; and especially in
one colossal haberdasher's shop, over which you may see the British flag
waving (in imitation of Windsor Castle) when the master of the shop is at
home. 34. Next to protection from external hostility, the two necessities
in a city are of food and water supply;—the latter essentially
constant. You can store food and forage, but water must flow freely. Hence
the Fountain and the Mercato become the centres of civil architecture.
Premising thus much, I will ask you to look once more at this cloister of
the Campo Santo of Pisa.
35. On first entering the place, its quiet, its solemnity, the perspective
of its aisles, and the conspicuous grace and precision of its traceries,
combine to give you the sensation of having entered a true Gothic
cloister. And if you walk round it hastily, and, glancing only at a fresco
or two, and the confused tombs erected against them, return to the
uncloistered sunlight of the piazza, you may quite easily carry away with
you, and ever afterwards retain, the notion that the Campo Santo of Pisa
is the same kind of thing as the cloister of Westminster Abbey.
36. I will beg you to look at the building, thus photographed, more
attentively. The "long-drawn aisle" is here, indeed,—but where is
the "fretted vault"?
A timber roof, simple as that of a country barn, and of which only the
horizontal beams catch the eye, connects an entirely plain outside wall
with an interior one, pierced by round-headed openings; in which are
inserted pieces of complex tracery, as foreign in conception to the rest
of the work as if the Pisan armata had gone up the Rhine instead of to
Crete, pillaged South Germany, and cut these pieces of tracery out of the
windows of some church in an advanced stage of fantastic design at
Nuremberg or Frankfort.
37. If you begin to question, hereupon, who was the Italian robber,
whether of marble or thought, and look to your Vasari, you find the
building attributed to John the Pisan; {1}—and you suppose the son
to have been so pleased by his father's adoption of Gothic forms that he
must needs borrow them, in this manner, ready made, from the Germans, and
thrust them into his round arches, or wherever else they would go.
{Footnote 1: The present traceries are of fifteenth century work, founded
on Giovanni's design.}
We will look at something more of his work, however, before drawing such
conclusion.
38. In the centres of the great squares of Siena and Perugia, rose,
obedient to engineers' art, two perennial fountains Without engineers'
art, the glens which cleave the sand-rock of Siena flow with living water;
and still, if there be a hell for the forger in Italy, he remembers
therein the sweet grotto and green wave of Fonte Branda. But on the very
summit of the two hills, crested by their great civic fortresses, and in
the centres of their circuit of walls, rose the two guided wells; each in
basin of goodly marble, sculptured—at Perugia, by John of Pisa, at
Siena, by James of Quercia.
39. It is one of the bitterest regrets of my life (and I have many which
some men would find difficult to bear,) that I never saw, except when I
was a youth, and then with sealed eyes, Jacopo della Quercia's fountain.
{1} The Sienese, a little while since, tore it down, and put up a model of
it by a modern carver. In like manner, perhaps, you will some day knock
the Elgin marbles to pieces, and commission an Academician to put up new
ones,—the Sienese doing worse than that (as if the Athenians were themselves
to break their Phidias' work).
{Footnote 1: I observe that Charles Dickens had the fortune denied to me.
﹃The market-place, or great Piazza, is a large square, with a great
broken-nosed fountain in it.﹄("Pictures from Italy.")}
But the fountain of John of Pisa, though much injured, and glued together
with asphalt, is still in its place.
40. I will now read to you what Vasari first says of him, and it. (I. 67.)
﹃Nicholas had, among other sons, one called John, who, because he always
followed his father, and, under his discipline, intended (bent himself to,
with a will,) sculpture and architecture, in a few years became not only
equal to his father, but in some things superior to him; wherefore
Nicholas, being now old, retired himself into Pisa, and living quietly
there, left the government of everything to his son. Accordingly, when
Pope Urban IV. died in Perugia, sending was made for John, who, going
there, made the tomb of that Pope of marble, the which, together with that
of Pope Martin IV., was afterwards thrown down, when the Perugians
{Illustration: PLATE III.—THE FOUNTAIN OF PERUGIA.}
enlarged their vescovado; so that only a few relics are seen sprinkled
about the church. And the Perugians, having at the same time brought from
the mountain of Pacciano, two miles distant from the city, through canals
of lead, a most abundant water, by means of the invention and industry of
a friar of the order of St. Silvester, it was given to John the Pisan to
make all the ornaments of this fountain, as well of bronze as of marble.
On which he set hand to it, and made there three orders of vases, two of
marble and one of bronze. The first is put upon twelve degrees of
twelve-faced steps; the second is upon some columns which put it upon a
level with the first one;﹄(that is, in the middle of it,) "and the third,
which is of bronze, rests upon three figures which have in the middle of
them some griffins, of bronze too, which pour water out on every side."
41. Many things we have to note in this passage, but first I will show you
the best picture I can of the thing itself.
The best I can; the thing itself being half destroyed, and what remains so
beautiful that no one can now quite rightly draw it; but Mr. Arthur
Severn, (the son of Keats's Mr. Severn,) was with me, looking reverently
at those remains, last summer, and has made, with help from the sun, this
sketch for you (Plate III.); entirely true and effective as far as his
time allowed.
Half destroyed, or more, I said it was,—Time doing grievous work on
it, and men worse. You heard Vasari saying of it, that it stood on twelve
degrees of twelve-faced steps. These—worn, doubtless, into little
more than a rugged slope—have been replaced by the moderns with four
circular steps, and an iron railing; {1} the bas-reliefs have been carried
off from the panels of the second vase, and its fair marble lips choked
with asphalt:—of what remains, you have here a rough but true image.
{Footnote 1: In Mr. Severn's sketch, the form of the original foundation
is approximately restored.}
In which you see there is not a trace of Gothic feeling or design of any
sort. No crockets, no pinnacles, no foils, no vaultings, no grotesques in
sculpture. Panels between pillars, panels carried on pillars, sculptures
in those panels like the Metopes of the Parthenon; a Greek vase in the
middle, and griffins in the middle of that. Here is your font, not at all
of Saint John, but of profane and civil-engineering John. This is his
manner of baptism of the town of Perugia.
42. Thus early, it seems, the antagonism of profane Greek to
ecclesiastical Gothic declares itself. It seems as if in Perugia, as in
London, you had the fountains in Trafalgar Square against Queen Elinor's
Cross; or the viaduct and railway station contending with the Gothic
chapel, which the master of the large manufactory close by has erected,
because he thinks pinnacles and crockets have a pious influence; and will
prevent his workmen from asking for shorter hours, or more wages.
43. It seems only; the antagonism is quite of another kind,—or,
rather, of many other kinds. But note at once how complete it is—how
utterly this Greek fountain of Perugia, and the round arches of Pisa, are
opposed to the school of design which gave the trefoils to Niccola's
pulpit, and the traceries to Giovanni's Campo Santo.
The antagonism, I say, is of another kind than ours; but deep and wide;
and to explain it, I must pass for a time to apparently irrelevant topics.
You were surprised, I hope, (if you were attentive enough to catch the
points in what I just now read from Vasari,) at my venturing to bring
before you, just after I had been using violent language against the
Sienese for breaking up the work of Quercia, that incidental sentence
giving account of the much more disrespectful destruction, by the
Perugians, of the tombs of Pope Urban IV., and Martin IV. Sending was made
for John, you see, first, when Pope Urban IV. died in Perugia—whose
tomb was to be carved by John; the Greek fountain being a secondary
business. But the tomb was so well destroyed, afterwards, that only a few
relics remained scattered here and there.
The tomb, I have not the least doubt, was Gothic;—and the breaking
of it to pieces was not in order to restore it afterwards, that a living
architect might get the job of restoration. Here is a stone out of one of
Giovanni Pisano's loveliest Gothic buildings, which I myself saw with my
own eyes dashed out, that a modern builder might be paid for putting in
another. But Pope Urban's tomb was not destroyed to such end. There was no
qualm of the belly, driving the hammer,—qualm of the conscience
probably; at all events, a deeper or loftier antagonism than one on points
of taste, or economy.
44. You observed that I described this Greek profane manner of design as
properly belonging to civil buildings, as opposed not only to
ecclesiastical buildings, but to military ones. Justice, or Righteousness,
and Veracity, are the characters of Greek art. These may be opposed
to religion, when religion becomes fantastic; but they must be
opposed to war, when war becomes unjust. And if, perchance, fantastic
religion and unjust war happen to go hand in hand, your Greek artist is
likely to use his hammer against them spitefully enough.
45. His hammer, or his Greek fire. Hear now this example of the
engineering ingenuities of our Pisan papa, in his younger days.
"The Florentines having begun, in Niccola's time, to throw down many
towers, which had been built in a barbarous manner through the whole city;
either that the people might be less hurt, by their means, in the fights
that often took place between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, or else that
there might be greater security for the State, it appeared to them that it
would be very difficult to ruin the Tower of the Death-watch, which was in
the place of St. John, because it had its walls built with such a grip in
them that the stones could not be stirred with the pickaxe, and also
because it was of the loftiest; whereupon Nicholas, causing the tower to
be cut, at the foot of it, all the length of one of its sides; and closing
up the cut, as he made it, with short (wooden) under-props, about a yard
long, and setting fire to them, when the props were burned, the tower
fell, and broke itself nearly all to pieces: which was held a thing so
ingenious and so useful for such affairs, that it has since passed into a
custom, so that when it is needful, in this easiest manner, any edifice
may be thrown down."
46. 'When it is needful.' Yes; but when is that? If instead of the towers
of the Death-watch in the city, one could ruin the towers of the
Death-watch of evil pride and evil treasure in men's hearts, there would
be need enough for such work both in Florence and London. But the walls of
those spiritual towers have still stronger 'grip' in them, and are
fireproof with a vengeance.
"Le mure me parean die ferro fosse,
. . . e el mi dixe, il fuoco eterno
Chentro laffoca, le dimostra rosse."
But the towers in Florence, shattered to fragments by this ingenious
engineer, and the tombs in Perugia, which his son will carve, only that
they also may be so well destroyed that only a few relics remain,
scattered up and down the church,—are these, also, only the iron
towers, and the red-hot tombs, of the city of Dis?
Let us see.
47. In order to understand the relation of the tradesmen and working men,
including eminently the artist, to the general life of the thirteenth
century, I must lay before you the clearest elementary charts I can of the
course which the fates of Italy were now appointing for her.
My first chart must be geographical. I want you to have a clearly
dissected and closely fitted notion of the natural boundaries of her
states, and their relations to surrounding ones. Lay hold first, firmly,
of your conception of the valleys of the Po and the Arno, running counter
to each other—opening east and opening west,—Venice at the end
of the one, Pisa at the end of the other.
48. These two valleys—the hearts of Lombardy and Etruria—virtually
contain the life of Italy. They are entirely different in character:
Lombardy, essentially luxurious and worldly, at this time rude in art, but
active; Etruria, religious, intensely imaginative, and inheriting refined
forms of art from before the days of Porsenna.
49. South of these, in mid-Italy, you have Romagna,—the valley of
the Tiber. In that valley, decayed Rome, with her lust of empire
inextinguishable;—no inheritance of imaginative art, nor power of
it; dragging her own ruins hourly into more fantastic ruin, and defiling
her faith hourly with more fantastic guilt.
South of Romagna, you have the kingdoms of Calabria and Sicily,—-Magna
Graecia, and Syracuse, in decay;——strange spiritual fire from
the Saracenic east still lighting the volcanic land, itself laid all in
ashes.
50. Conceive Italy then always in these four masses: Lombardy, Etruria,
Romagna, Calabria.
Now she has three great external powers to deal with: the western, France—the
northern, Germany—the eastern, Arabia. On her right the Frank; on
her left the Saracen; above her, the Teuton. And roughly, the French are a
religious chivalry; the Germans a profane chivalry; the Saracens an
infidel chivalry. What is best of each is benefiting Italy; what is worst,
afflicting her. And in the time we are occupied with, all are afflicting
her.
What Charlemagne, Barbarossa, or Saladin did to teach her, you can trace
only by carefullest thought. But in this thirteenth century all these
three powers are adverse to her, as to each other. Map the methods of
their adversity thus:—-
51. Germany, (profane chivalry,) is vitally adverse to the Popes;
endeavouring to establish imperial and knightly power against theirs. It
is fiercely, but frankly, covetous of Italian territory, seizes all it can
of Lombardy and Calabria, and with any help procurable either from robber
Christians or robber Saracens, strives, in an awkward manner, and by open
force, to make itself master of Rome, and all Italy.
52. France, all surge and foam of pious chivalry, lifts herself in fitful
rage of devotion, of avarice, and of pride. She is the natural ally of the
church; makes her own monks the proudest of the Popes; raises Avignon into
another Rome; prays and pillages insatiably; pipes pastoral songs of
innocence, and invents grotesque variations of crime; gives grace to the
rudeness of England, and venom to the cunning of Italy. She is a chimera
among nations, and one knows not whether to admire most the valour of
Guiscard, the virtue of St. Louis or the villany of his brother.
53. The Eastern powers—Greek, Israelite, Saracen—are at once
the enemies of the Western, their prey, and their tutors.
They bring them methods of ornament and of merchandise, and stimulate in
them the worst conditions of pugnacity, bigotry, and rapine. That is the
broad geographical and political relation of races. Next, you must
consider the conditions of their time.
54. I told you, in my second lecture on Engraving, that before the twelfth
century the nations were too savage to be Christian, and after the
fifteenth too carnal to be Christian.
The delicacy of sensation and refinements of imagination necessary to
understand Christianity belong to the mid period when men risen from a
life of brutal hardship are not yet fallen to one of brutal luxury. You
can neither comprehend the character of Christ while you are chopping
flints for tools, and gnawing raw bones for food; nor when you have ceased
to do anything with either tools or hands, and dine on gilded capons. In
Dante's lines, beginning
"I saw Bellincion Berti walk abroad
In leathern girdle, with a clasp of bone,"
you have the expression of his sense of the increasing luxury of the age,
already sapping its faith. But when Bellincion Berti walked abroad in
skins not yet made into leather, and with the bones of his dinner in a
heap at his door, instead of being cut into girdle clasps, he was just as
far from capacity of being a Christian.
55. The following passage, from Carlyle's "Chartism," expresses better
than any one else has done, or is likely to do it, the nature of this
Christian era, (extending from the twelfth to the sixteenth century,) in
England,—the like being entirely true of it elsewhere:—
"In those past silent centuries, among those silent classes, much had been
going on. Not only had red deer in the New and other forests been got
preserved and shot; and treacheries {1} of Simon de Montfort, wars of Red
and White Roses, battles of Crecy, battles of Bosworth, and many other
battles, been got transacted and adjusted; but England wholly, not without
sore toil and aching bones to the millions of sires and the millions of
sons of eighteen generations, had been got drained and tilled, covered
with yellow harvests, beautiful and rich in possessions. The mud-wooden
Caesters and Chesters had become steepled, tile-roofed, compact towns.
Sheffield had taken to the manufacture of Sheffield whittles. Worstead
could from wool spin yarn, and knit or weave the same into stockings or
breeches for men. England had property valuable to the auctioneer; but the
accumulate manufacturing, commercial, economic skill which lay impalpably
warehoused in English hands and heads, what auctioneer could estimate?
{Footnote 1: Perhaps not altogether so, any more than Oliver's dear papa
Carlyle. We may have to read him also, otherwise than the British
populace have yet read, some day.}
"Hardly an Englishman to be met with but could do something; some
cunninger thing than break his fellow-creature's head with battle-axes.
The seven incorporated trades, with their million guild-brethren, with
their hammers, their shuttles, and tools, what an army,—fit to
conquer that land of England, as we say, and hold it conquered! Nay,
strangest of all, the English people had acquired the faculty and habit of
thinking,—even of believing; individual conscience had unfolded
itself among them;—Conscience, and Intelligence its handmaid. {1}
Ideas of innumerable kinds were circulating among these men; witness one
Shakspeare, a wool-comber, poacher or whatever else, at Stratford, in
Warwickshire, who happened to write books!—the finest human figure,
as I apprehend, that Nature has hitherto seen fit to make of our widely
Teutonic clay. Saxon, Norman, Celt, or Sarmat, I find no human soul so
beautiful, these fifteen hundred known years;—our supreme modern
European man. Him England had contrived to realize: were there not ideas?
{Footnote 1: Observe Carlyle's order of sequence. Perceptive Reason is the
Handmaid of Conscience, not Conscience hers. If you resolve to do right,
you will soon do wisely; but resolve only to do wisely, and you will never
do right.}
"Ideas poetic and also Puritanic, that had to seek utterance in the
notablest way! England had got her Shakspeare, but was now about to get
her Milton and Oliver Cromwell. This, too, we will call a new expansion,
hard as it might be to articulate and adjust; this, that a man could
actually have a conscience for his own behoof, and not for his priest's
only; that his priest, be he who he might, would henceforth have to take
that fact along with him."
56. You observe, in this passage, account is given you of two things—(A)
of the development of a powerful class of tradesmen and artists; and, (B)
of the development of an individual conscience.
In the savage times you had simply the hunter, digger, and robber; now you
have also the manufacturer and salesman. The ideas of ingenuity with the
hand, of fairness in exchange, have occurred to us. We can do something
now with our fingers, as well as with our fists; and if we want our
neighbours' goods, we will not simply carry them off, as of old, but offer
him some of ours in exchange.
57. Again; whereas before we were content to let our priests do for us all
they could, by gesticulating, dressing, sacrificing, or beating of drums
and blowing of trumpets; and also direct our steps in the way of life,
without any doubt on our part of their own perfect acquaintance with it,—we
have now got to do something for ourselves—to think something for
ourselves; and thus have arrived in straits of conscience which, so long
as we endeavour to steer through them honestly, will be to us indeed a
quite secure way of life, and of all living wisdom.
58. Now the centre of this new freedom of thought is in Germany; and the
power of it is shown first, as I told you in my opening lecture, in the
great struggle of Frederick II. with Rome. And German freedom of thought
had certainly made some progress, when it had managed to reduce the Pope
to disguise himself as a soldier, ride out of Rome by moonlight, and
gallop his thirty-four miles to the seaside before
{Illustration: PLATE IV.—NORMAN IMAGERY.}
summer dawn. Here, clearly, is quite a new state of things for the Holy
Father of Christendom to consider, during such wholesome horse-exercise.
59. Again; the refinements of new art are represented by France—centrally
by St. Louis with his Sainte Chapelle. Happily, I am able to lay on your
table to-day—having placed it three years ago in your educational
series—a leaf of a Psalter, executed for St. Louis himself. He and
his artists are scarcely out of their savage life yet, and have no notion
of adorning the Psalms better than by pictures of long-necked cranes,
long-eared rabbits, long-tailed lions, and red and white goblins putting
their tongues out. {1} But in refinement of touch, in beauty of colour, in
the human faculties of order and grace, they are long since, evidently,
past the flint and bone stage,—refined enough, now,—subtle
enough, now, to learn anything that is pretty and fine, whether in
theology or any other matter.
{Footnote 1: I cannot go to the expense of engraving this most subtle
example; but Plate IV. shows the average conditions of temper and
imagination in religious ornamental work of the time.}
60. Lastly, the new principle of Exchange is represented by Lombardy and
Venice, to such purpose that your Merchant and Jew of Venice, and your
Lombard of Lombard Street, retain some considerable influence on your
minds, even to this day.
And in the exact midst of all such transition, behold, Etruria with her
Pisans—her Florentines,—receiving, resisting, and reigning
over all: pillaging the Saracens of their marbles—binding the French
bishops in silver chains;—shattering the towers of German tyranny
into small pieces,—building with strange jewellery the belfry tower
for newly-conceived Christianity;—and, in sacred picture, and sacred
song, reaching the height, among nations, most passionate, and most pure.
I must close my lecture without indulging myself yet, by addition of
detail; requesting you, before we next meet, to fix these general outlines
in your minds, so that, without disturbing their distinctness, I may trace
in the sequel the relations of Italian Art to these political and
religious powers; and determine with what force of passionate sympathy, or
fidelity of resigned obedience, the Pisan artists, father and son,
executed the indignation of Florence and fulfilled the piety of Orvieto.
LECTURE III. SHIELD AND APRON.
61. I laid before you, in my last lecture, first lines of the chart of
Italian history in the thirteenth century, which I hope gradually to fill
with colour, and enrich, to such degree as may be sufficient for all
comfortable use. But I indicated, as the more special subject of our
immediate study, the nascent power of liberal thought, and liberal art,
over dead tradition and rude workmanship.
To-day I must ask you to examine in greater detail the exact relation of
this liberal art to the illiberal elements which surrounded it.
62. You do not often hear me use that word "Liberal" in any favourable
sense. I do so now, because I use it also in a very narrow and exact
sense. I mean that the thirteenth century is, in Italy's year of life, her
17th of March. In the light of it, she assumes her toga virilis; and it is
sacred to her god Liber.
63. To her god Liber,—observe: not Dionusos, still less
Bacchus, but her own ancient and simple deity. And if you have read with
some care the statement I gave you, with Carlyle's help, of the moment and
manner of her change from savageness to dexterity, and from rudeness to
refinement of life, you will hear, familiar as the lines are to you, the
invocation in the first Georgic with a new sense of its meaning:—
"Vos, O clarissima mundi
Lumina, labentem coelo quae ducitis annum,
Liber, et alma Ceres; vestro si munere tellus
Chaoniam pingui glandem mutavit arista,
Poculaqu' inventis Acheloia miscuit uvis,
Munera vestra cano."
These gifts, innocent, rich, full of life, exquisitely beautiful in order
and grace of growth, I have thought best to symbolize to you, in the
series of types of the power of the Greek gods, placed in your educational
series, by the blossom of the wild strawberry; which in rising from its
trine cluster of trine leaves,—itself as beautiful as a white rose,
and always single on its stalk, like an ear of corn, yet with a succeeding
blossom at its side, and bearing a fruit which is as distinctly a group of
seeds as an ear of corn itself, and yet is the pleasantest to taste of all
the pleasant things prepared by nature for the food of men, {1}—may
accurately symbolize, and help you to remember, the conditions of this
liberal and delightful, yet entirely modest and orderly, art, and thought.
{Footnote 1: I am sorry to pack my sentences together in this confused
way. But I have much to say; and cannot always stop to polish or adjust it
as I used to do.}
64. You will find in the fourth of my inaugural lectures, at the 98th
paragraph, this statement,—much denied by modern artists and
authors, but nevertheless quite unexceptionally true,—that the
entire vitality of art depends upon its having for object either to state
a true thing, or adorn a serviceable one. The two functions of
art in Italy, in this entirely liberal and virescent phase of it,—virgin
art, we may call it, retaining the most literal sense of the words virga
and virgo,—are to manifest the doctrines of a religion which now,
for the first time, men had soul enough to understand; and to adorn
edifices or dress, with which the completed politeness of daily life might
be invested, its convenience completed, and its decorous and honourable
pride satisfied.
65. That pride was, among the men who gave its character to the century,
in honourableness of private conduct, and useful magnificence of public
art. Not of private or domestic art: observe this very particularly.
"Such was the simplicity of private manners,"—(I am now quoting
Sismondi, but with the fullest ratification that my knowledge enables me
to give,)—"and the economy of the richest citizens, that if a city
enjoyed repose only for a few years, it doubled its revenues, and found
itself, in a sort, encumbered with its riches. The Pisans knew neither of
the luxury of the table, nor that of furniture, nor that of a number of
servants; yet they were sovereigns of the whole of Sardinia, Corsica, and
Elba, had colonies at St. Jean d'Acre and Constantinople, and their
merchants in those cities carried on the most extended commerce with the
Saracens and Greeks." {1}
{Footnote 1: Sismondi; French translation, Brussels, 1838; vol. ii., p.
275.}
66. "And in that time," (I now give you my own translation of Giovanni
Villani,) "the citizens of Florence lived sober, and on coarse meats, and
at little cost; and had many customs and playfulnesses which were blunt
and rude; and they dressed themselves and their wives with coarse cloth;
many wore merely skins, with no lining, and all had only leathern
buskins; {1} and the Florentine ladies, plain shoes and stockings with no
ornaments; and the best of them were content with a close gown of coarse
scarlet of Cyprus, or camlet girded with an old-fashioned clasp-girdle;
and a mantle over all, lined with vaire, with a hood above; and that, they
threw over their heads. The women of lower rank were dressed in the same
manner, with coarse green Cambray cloth; fifty pounds was the ordinary
bride's dowry, and a hundred or a hundred and fifty would in those times
have been held brilliant, ('isfolgorata,' dazzling, with sense of
dissipation or extravagance;) and most maidens were twenty or more before
they married. Of such gross customs were then the Florentines; but of good
faith, and loyal among themselves and in their state; and in their coarse
life, and poverty, did more and braver things than are done in our days
with more refinement and riches."
{Footnote 1: I find this note for expansion on the margin of my lecture,
but had no time to work it out:—'This lower class should be either
barefoot, or have strong shoes—wooden clogs good. Pretty Boulogne
sabot with purple stockings. Waterloo Road—little girl with her hair
in curlpapers,—a coral necklace round her neck—the neck bare—and
her boots of thin stuff, worn out, with her toes coming through, and rags
hanging from her heels,—a profoundly accurate type of English
national and political life. Your hair in curlpapers—borrowing tongs
from every foreign nation, to pinch you into manners. The rich
ostentatiously wearing coral about the bare neck; and the poor—cold
as the stones and indecent.'}
67. I detain you a moment at the words "scarlet of Cyprus, or camlet."
Observe that camelot (camelet) from kamaelotae, camel's skin, is a
stuff made of silk and camel's hair originally, afterwards of silk and
wool. At Florence, the camel's hair would always have reference to the
Baptist, who, as you know, in Lippi's picture, wears the camel's skin
itself, made into a Florentine dress, such as Villani has just described,
"col tassello sopra," with the hood above. Do you see how important the
word "Capulet" is becoming to us, in its main idea?
68. Not in private nor domestic art, therefore, I repeat to you, but in
useful magnificence of public art, these citizens expressed their pride:—and
that public art divided itself into two branches—civil, occupied
upon ethic subjects of sculpture and painting; and religious, occupied
upon scriptural or traditional histories, in treatment of which,
nevertheless, the nascent power and liberality of thought were apparent,
not only in continual amplification and illustration of scriptural story
by the artist's own invention, but in the acceptance of profane mythology,
as part of the Scripture, or tradition, given by Divine inspiration.
69. Nevertheless, for the provision of things necessary in domestic life,
there developed itself, together with the group of inventive artists
exercising these nobler functions, a vast body of craftsmen, and,
literally, manufacturers, workers by hand, who associated
themselves, as chance, tradition, or the accessibility of material
directed, in towns which thenceforward occupied a leading position in
commerce, as producers of a staple of excellent, or perhaps inimitable,
quality; and the linen or cambric of Cambray, the lace of Mechlin, the
wool of Worstead, and the steel of Milan, implied the tranquil and
hereditary skill of multitudes, living in wealthy industry, and humble
honour.
70. Among these artisans, the weaver, the ironsmith, the goldsmith, the
carpenter, and the mason necessarily took the principal rank, and on their
occupations the more refined arts were wholesomely based, so that the five
businesses may be more completely expressed thus:
The weaver and embroiderer,
The ironsmith and armourer,
The goldsmith and jeweller,
The carpenter and engineer,
The stonecutter and painter.
You have only once to turn over the leaves of Lionardo's sketch book, in
the Ambrosian Library, to see how carpentry is connected with engineering,—the
architect was always a stonecutter, and the stonecutter not often
practically separate, as yet, from the painter, and never so in general
conception of function. You recollect, at a much later period, Kent's
description of Cornwall's steward:
"KENT. You cowardly rascal!—nature disclaims in thee, a tailor made
thee!
CORNWALL. Thou art a strange fellow—a tailor make a man?
KENT. Ay, sir; a stonecutter, or a painter, could not have made him so
ill; though they had been but two hours at the trade."
71. You may consider then this group of artizans with the merchants, as
now forming in each town an important Tiers Etat, or Third State of the
people, occupied in service, first, of the ecclesiastics, who in monastic
bodies inhabited the cloisters round each church; and, secondly, of the
knights, who, with their retainers, occupied, each family their own fort,
in allied defence of their appertaining streets.
72. A Third Estate, indeed; but adverse alike to both the others, to
Montague as to Capulet, when they become disturbers of the public peace;
and having a pride of its own,—hereditary still, but consisting in
the inheritance of skill and knowledge rather than of blood,—which
expressed the sense of such inheritance by taking its name habitually from
the master rather than the sire; and which, in its natural antagonism to
dignities won only by violence, or recorded only by heraldry, you may
think of generally as the race whose bearing is the Apron, instead of the
shield.
73. When, however, these two, or in perfect subdivision three, bodies of
men, lived in harmony,—the knights remaining true to the State, the
clergy to their faith, and the workmen to their craft,—conditions of
national force were arrived at, under which all the great art of the
middle ages was accomplished. The pride of the knights, the avarice of the
priests, and the gradual abasement of character in the craftsman, changing
him from a citizen able to wield either tools in peace or weapons in war,
to a dull tradesman, forced to pay mercenary troops to defend his shop
door, are the direct causes of common ruin towards the close of the
sixteenth century.
74. But the deep underlying cause of the decline in national character
itself, was the exhaustion of the Christian faith. None of its practical
claims were avouched either by reason or experience; and the imagination
grew weary of sustaining them in despite of both. Men could not, as their
powers of reflection became developed, steadily conceive that the sins of
a life might be done away with, by finishing it with Mary's name on the
lips; nor could tradition of miracle for ever resist the personal
discovery, made by each rude disciple by himself, that he might pray to
all the saints for a twelvemonth together, and yet not get what he asked
for.
75. The Reformation succeeded in proclaiming that existing Christianity
was a lie; but substituted no theory of it which could be more rationally
or credibly sustained; and ever since, the religion of educated persons
throughout Europe has been dishonest or ineffectual; it is only among the
labouring peasantry that the grace of a pure Catholicism, and the patient
simplicities of the Puritan, maintain their imaginative dignity, or assert
their practical use.
76. The existence of the nobler arts, however, involves the harmonious
life and vital faith of the three classes whom we have just distinguished;
and that condition exists, more or less disturbed, indeed, by the vices
inherent in each class, yet, on the whole, energetically and productively,
during the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. But
our present subject being Architecture only, I will limit your attention
altogether to the state of society in the great age of architecture, the
thirteenth century. A great age in all ways; but most notably so in the
correspondence it presented, up to a just and honourable point, with the
utilitarian energy of our own days.
77. The increase of wealth, the safety of industry, and the conception of
more convenient furniture of life, to which we must attribute the rise of
the entire artist class, were accompanied, in that century, by much
enlargement in the conception of useful public works: and—not by private
enterprise,—that idle persons might get dividends out of the public
pocket,—but by public enterprise,—each citizen paying
down at once his share of what was necessary to accomplish the benefit to
the State,—great architectural and engineering efforts were made for
the common service. Common, observe; but not, in our present sense,
republican. One of the most ludicrous sentences ever written in the
blindness of party spirit is that of Sismondi, in which he declares,
thinking of these public works only, that 'the architecture of the
thirteenth century is entirely republican.' The architecture of the
thirteenth century is, in the mass of it, simply baronial or
ecclesiastical; it is of castles, palaces, or churches; but it is true
that splendid civic works were also accomplished by the vigour of the
newly risen popular power.
﹃The canal named Naviglio Graude, which brings the waters of the Ticino to
Milan, traversing a distance of thirty miles, was undertaken in 1179,
recommended in 1257, and, soon after, happily terminated; in it still
consists the wealth of a vast extent of Lombardy. At the same time the
town of Milan rebuilt its walls, which were three miles round, and had
sixteen marble gates, of magnificence which might have graced the capital
of all Italy. The Genovese, in 1276 and 1283, built their two splendid
docks, and the great wall of their quay; and in 1295 finished the noble
aqueduct which brings pure and abundant waters to their city from a great
distance among their mountains. There is not a single town in Italy which
at the same time did not undertake works of this kind; and while these
larger undertakings were in progress, stone bridges were built across the
rivers, the streets and piazzas were paved with large slabs of stone, and
every free government recognized the duty of providing for the convenience
of the citizens.﹄{1}
{Footnote 1: Simondi, vol ii. chap. 10.}
78. The necessary consequence of this enthusiasm in useful building, was
the formation of a vast body of craftsmen and architects; corresponding in
importance to that which the railway, with its associated industry, has
developed in modern times, but entirely different in personal character,
and relation to the body politic.
Their personal character was founded on the accurate knowledge of their
business in all respects; the ease and pleasure of unaffected invention;
and the true sense of power to do everything better than it had ever been
yet done, coupled with general contentment in life, and in its vigour and
skill.
It is impossible to overrate the difference between such a condition of
mind, and that of the modern artist, who either does not know his business
at all, or knows it only to recognize his own inferiority to every former
workman of distinction.
79. Again: the political relation of these artificers to the State was
that of a caste entirely separate from the noblesse; {1} paid for their
daily work what was just, and competing with each other to supply the best
article they could for the money. And it is, again, impossible to overrate
the difference between such a social condition, and that of the artists of
to-day, struggling to occupy a position of equality in wealth with the
noblesse,—paid irregular and monstrous prices by an entirely
ignorant and selfish public; and competing with each other to supply the
worst article they can for the money.
{Footnote 1: The giving of knighthood to Jacopo della Quercia for his
lifelong service to Siena was not the elevation of a dexterous workman,
but grace to a faithful citizen.}
I never saw anything so impudent on the walls of any exhibition, in any
country, as last year in London. It was a daub professing to be a﹃harmony
in pink and white﹄(or some such nonsense;) absolute rubbish, and which
had taken about a quarter of an hour to scrawl or daub—it had no
pretence to be called painting. The price asked for it was two hundred and
fifty guineas.
80. In order to complete your broad view of the elements of social power
in the thirteenth century, you have now farther to understand the position
of the country people, who maintained by their labour these three classes,
whose action you can discern, and whose history you can read; while, of
those who maintained them, there is no history, except of the annual
ravage of their fields by contending cities or nobles;—and, finally,
that of the higher body of merchants, whose influence was already
beginning to counterpoise the prestige of noblesse in Florence, and who
themselves constituted no small portion of the noblesse of Venice.
The food-producing country was for the most part still possessed by the
nobles; some by the ecclesiastics; but a portion, I do not know how large,
was in the hands of peasant proprietors, of whom Sismondi gives this, to
my mind, completely pleasant and satisfactory, though, to his, very
painful, account:—
"They took no interest in public affairs; they had assemblies of their
commune at the village in which the church of their parish was situated,
and to which they retreated to defend themselves in case of war; they had
also magistrates of their own choice; but all their interests appeared to
them enclosed in the circle of their own commonality; they did not meddle
with general politics, and held it for their point of honour to remain
faithful, through all revolutions, to the State of which they formed a
part, obeying, without hesitation, its chiefs, whoever they were, and by
whatever title they occupied their places."
81. Of the inferior agricultural labourers, employed on the farms of the
nobles and richer ecclesiastics, I find nowhere due notice, nor does any
historian seriously examine their manner of life. Liable to every form of
robbery and oppression, I yet regard their state as not only morally but
physically happier than that of riotous soldiery, or the lower class of
artizans, and as the safeguard of every civilized nation, through all its
worst vicissitudes of folly and crime. Nature has mercifully appointed
that seed must be sown, and sheep folded, whatever lances break, or
religions fail; and at this hour, while the streets of Florence and Verona
are full of idle politicians, loud of tongue, useless of hand and
treacherous of heart, there still may be seen in their market-places,
standing, each by his heap of pulse or maize, the grey-haired labourers,
silent, serviceable, honourable, keeping faith, untouched by change, to
their country and to Heaven. {1}
{Footnote 1: Compare "Sesame and Lilies," sec. 38, p. 58. (P. 86 of the
small edition of 1882.)}
82. It is extremely difficult to determine in what degree the feelings or
intelligence of this class influenced the architectural design of the
thirteenth century;—how far afield the cathedral tower was intended
to give delight, and to what simplicity of rustic conception Quercia or
Ghiberti appealed by the fascination of their Scripture history. You may
at least conceive, at this date, a healthy animation in all men's minds,
and the children of the vineyard and sheepcote crowding the city on its
festa days, and receiving impulse to busier, if not nobler, education, in
its splendour. {1}
{Footnote 1: Of detached abbeys, see note on Education of Joan of Arc,
"Sesame and Lilies," sec. 82, p. 106. (P. 158 of the small edition of
1882.)}
83. The great class of the merchants is more difficult to define; but you
may regard them generally as the examples of whatever modes of life might
be consistent with peace and justice, in the economy of transfer, as
opposed to the military license of pillage.
They represent the gradual ascendancy of foresight, prudence, and order in
society, and the first ideas of advantageous national intercourse. Their
body is therefore composed of the most intelligent and temperate natures
of the time,—uniting themselves, not directly for the purpose of
making money, but to obtain stability for equal institutions, security of
property, and pacific relations with neighbouring states. Their guilds
form the only representatives of true national council, unaffected, as the
landed proprietors were, by merely local circumstances and accidents.
84. The strength of this order, when its own conduct was upright, and its
opposition to the military body was not in avaricious cowardice, but in
the resolve to compel justice and to secure peace, can only be understood
by you after an examination of the great changes in the government of
Florence during the thirteenth century, which, among other minor
achievements interesting to us, led to that destruction of the Tower of
the Death-watch, so ingeniously accomplished by Niccola Pisano. This
change, and its results, will be the subject of my next lecture. I must
to-day sum, and in some farther degree make clear, the facts already laid
before you.
85. We have seen that the inhabitants of every great Italian state may be
divided, and that very stringently, into the five classes of knights,
priests, merchants, artists, and peasants. No distinction exists between
artist and artizan, except that of higher genius or better conduct; the
best artist is assuredly also the best artizan; and the simplest workman
uses his invention and emotion as well as his fingers. The entire body of
artists is under the orders (as shopmen are under the orders of their
customers), of the knights, priests, and merchants,—the knights for
the most part demanding only fine goldsmiths' work, stout armour, and rude
architecture; the priests commanding both the finest architecture and
painting, and the richest kinds of decorative dress and jewellery,—while
the merchants directed works of public use, and were the best judges of
artistic skill. The competition for the Baptistery gates of Florence is
before the guild of merchants; nor is their award disputed, even in
thought, by any of the candidates.
86. This is surely a fact to be taken much to heart by our present
communities of Liverpool and Manchester. They probably suppose, in their
modesty, that lords and clergymen are the proper judges of art, and
merchants can only, in the modern phrase, 'know what they like,' or follow
humbly the guidance of their golden-crested or flat-capped superiors. But
in the great ages of art, neither knight nor pope shows signs of true
power of criticism. The artists crouch before them, or quarrel with them,
according to their own tempers. To the merchants they submit silently, as
to just and capable judges. And look what men these are, who submit.
Donatello, Ghiberti, Quercia, Luca! If men like these submit to the
merchant, who shall rebel?
87. But the still franker, and surer, judgment of innocent pleasure was
awarded them by all classes alike: and the interest of the public was the
final rule of right,—that public being always eager to see,
and earnest to learn. For the stories told by their artists formed, they
fully believed, a Book of Life; and every man of real genius took up his
function of illustrating the scheme of human morality and salvation, as
naturally, and faithfully, as an English mother of to-day giving her
children their first lessons in the Bible. In this endeavour to teach they
almost unawares taught themselves; the question﹃How shall I represent
this most clearly?﹄became to themselves, presently,﹃How was this most
likely to have happened?﹄and habits of fresh and accurate thought thus
quickly enlivened the formalities of the Greek pictorial theology;
formalities themselves beneficent, because restraining by their severity
and mystery the wantonness of the newer life. Foolish modern critics have
seen nothing in the Byzantine school but a barbarism to be conquered and
forgotten. But that school brought to the art-scholars of the thirteenth
century, laws which had been serviceable to Phidias, and symbols which had
been beautiful to Homer: and methods and habits of pictorial scholarship
which gave a refinement of manner to the work of the simplest craftsman,
and became an education to the higher artists which no discipline of
literature can now bestow, developed themselves in the effort to decipher,
and the impulse to re-interpret, the Eleusinian divinity of Byzantine
tradition.
88. The words I have just used, "pictorial scholarship," and﹃pictorial
theology,﹄remind me how strange it must appear to you that in this sketch
of the intellectual state of Italy in the thirteenth century I have taken
no note of literature itself, nor of the fine art of Music with which it
was associated in minstrelsy. The corruption of the meaning of the word
"clerk," from "a chosen person" to "a learned one," partly indicates the
position of literature in the war between the golden crest and scarlet
cap; but in the higher ranks, literature and music became the grace of the
noble's life, or the occupation of the monk's, without forming any
separate class, or exercising any materially visible political power.
Masons or butchers might establish a government,—but never
troubadours: and though a good knight held his education to be imperfect
unless he could write a sonnet and sing it, he did not esteem his castle
to be at the mercy of the "editor" of a manuscript. He might indeed owe
his life to the fidelity of a minstrel, or be guided in his policy by the
wit of a clown; but he was not the slave of sensual music, or vulgar
literature, and never allowed his Saturday reviewer to appear at table
without the cock's comb.
89. On the other hand, what was noblest in thought or saying was in those
times as little attended to as it is now. I do not feel sure that, even in
after times, the poem of Dante has had any political effect on Italy; but
at all events, in his life, even at Verona, where he was treated most
kindly, he had not half so much influence with Can Grande as the rough
Count of Castelbarco, not one of whose words was ever written, or now
remains; and whose portrait, by no means that of a man of literary genius,
almost disfigures, by its plainness, the otherwise grave and perfect
beauty of his tomb.
LECTURE IV. PARTED PER PALE.
90. The chart of Italian intellect and policy which I have endeavoured to
put into form in the last three lectures, may, I hope, have given you a
clear idea of the subordinate, yet partly antagonistic, position which the
artist, or merchant,—whom in my present lecture I shall class
together,—occupied, with respect to the noble and priest. As an
honest labourer, he was opposed to the violence of pillage, and to the
folly of pride: as an honest thinker, he was likely to discover any latent
absurdity in the stories he had to represent in their nearest likelihood;
and to be himself moved strongly by the true meaning of events which he
was striving to make ocularly manifest. The painter terrified himself with
his own fiends, and reproved or comforted himself by the lips of his own
saints, far more profoundly than any verbal preacher; and thus, whether as
craftsman or inventor, was likely to be foremost in defending the laws of
his city, or directing its reformation.
91. The contest of the craftsman with the pillaging soldier is typically
represented by the war of the Lombard League with Frederick II.; and that
of the craftsman with the hypocritical priest, by the war of the Pisans
with Gregory IX. (1241). But in the present lecture I wish only to fix
your attention on the revolutions in Florence, which indicated, thus
early, the already established ascendancy of the moral forces which were
to put an end to open robber-soldiership; and at least to compel the
assertion of some higher principle in war, if not, as in some distant day
may be possible, the cessation of war itself.
The most important of these revolutions was virtually that of which I
before spoke to you, taking place in mid-thirteenth century, in the year
l250,—a very memorable one for Christendom, and the very crisis of
vital change in its methods of economy, and conceptions of art.
92. Observe, first, the exact relations at that time of Christian and
Profane Chivalry. St. Louis, in the winter of 1248-9, lay in the isle of
Cyprus, with his crusading army. He had trusted to Providence for
provisions; and his army was starving. The profane German emperor,
Frederick II., was at war with Venice, but gave a safe-conduct to the
Venetian ships, which enabled them to carry food to Cyprus, and to save
St. Louis and his crusaders. Frederick had been for half his life
excommunicate,—and the Pope (Innocent IV.) at deadly spiritual and
temporal war with him;—spiritually, because he had brought Saracens
into Apulia; temporally, because the Pope wanted Apulia for himself. St.
Louis and his mother both wrote to Innocent, praying him to be reconciled
to the kind heretic who had saved the whole crusading army. But the Pope
remained implacably thundrous; and Frederick, weary of quarrel, stayed
quiet in one of his Apulian castles for a year. The repose of infidelity
is seldom cheerful, unless it be criminal. Frederick had much to repent
of, much to regret, nothing to hope, and nothing to do. At the end of his
year's quiet he was attacked by dysentery, and so made his final peace
with the Pope, and heaven,—aged fifty-six.
93. Meantime St. Louis had gone on into Egypt, had got his army defeated,
his brother killed, and himself carried captive. You may be interested in
seeing, in the leaf of his psalter which I have laid on the table, the
death of that brother set down in golden letters, between the common
letters of ultramarine, on the eighth of February.
94. Providence, defied by Frederick, and trusted in by St. Louis, made
such arrangements for them both; Providence not in anywise regarding the
opinions of either king, but very much regarding the facts, that the one
had no business in Egypt, nor the other in Apulia.
No two kings, in the history of the world, could have been happier, or
more useful, than these two might have been, if they only had had the
sense to stay in their own capitals, and attend to their own affairs. But
they seem only to have been born to show what grievous results, under the
power of discontented imagination, a Christian could achieve by faith, and
a philosopher by reason. {1}
{Footnote 1: It must not be thought that this is said in disregard of the
nobleness of either of these two glorious Kings. Among the many designs of
past years, one of my favorites was to write a life of Frederick II. But I
hope that both his, and that of Henry II. of England, will soon be written
now, by a man who loves them as well as I do, and knows them far better.}
95. The death of Frederick II. virtually ended the soldier power in
Florence; and the mercantile power assumed the authority it thenceforward
held, until, in the hands of the Medici, it destroyed the city.
We will now trace the course and effects of the three revolutions which
closed the reign of War, and crowned the power of Peace.
96. In the year 1248, while St. Louis was in Cyprus, I told you Frederick
was at war with Venice. He was so because she stood, if not as the leader,
at least as the most important ally, of the great Lombard mercantile
league against the German military power.
That league consisted essentially of Venice, Milan, Bologna, and Genoa, in
alliance with the Pope; the Imperial or Ghibelline towns were, Padua and
Verona under Ezzelin; Mantua, Pisa, and Siena. I do not name the minor
towns of north Italy which associated themselves with each party: get only
the main localities of the contest well into your minds. It was all
concentrated in the furious hostility of Genoa and Pisa; Genoa fighting
really very piously for the Pope, as well as for herself; Pisa for her own
hand, and for the Emperor as much as suited her. The mad little sea falcon
never caught sight of another water-bird on the wing, but she must hawk at
it; and as an ally of the Emperor, balanced Venice and Genoa with her
single strength. And so it came to pass that the victory of either the
Guelph or Ghibelline party depended on the final action of Florence.
97. Florence meanwhile was fighting with herself, for her own amusement.
She was nominally at the head of the Guelphic League in Tuscany; but this
only meant that she hated Siena and Pisa, her southern and western
neighbours. She had never declared openly against the Emperor. On the
contrary, she always recognized his authority, in an imaginative manner,
as representing that of the Caesars. She spent her own energy chiefly in
street-fighting,—the death of Buondelmonti in 1215 having been the
root of a series of quarrels among her nobles which gradually took the
form of contests of honour; and were a kind of accidental tournaments,
fought to the death, because they could not be exciting or dignified
enough on any other condition. And thus the manner of life came to be
customary, which you have accurately, with its consequences, pictured by
Shakspeare. Samson bites his thumb at Abraham, and presently the streets
are impassable in battle. The quarrel in the Canongate between the Leslies
and Seytons, in Scott's 'Abbot,' represents the same temper; and marks
also, what Shakspeare did not so distinctly, because it would have
interfered with the domestic character of his play, the connection of
these private quarrels with political divisions which paralyzed the entire
body of the State.—Yet these political schisms, in the earlier days
of Italy, never reached the bitterness of Scottish feud, {1} because they
were never so sincere. Protestant and Catholic Scotsmen faithfully
believed each other to be servants of the devil; but the Guelph and
Ghibelline of Florence each respected, in the other, the fidelity to the
Emperor, or piety towards the Pope, which he found it convenient, for the
time, to dispense with in his own person. The street fighting was
therefore more general, more chivalric, more good-humoured; a word of
offence set all the noblesse of the town on fire; every one rallied to his
post; fighting began at once in half a dozen places of recognized
convenience, but ended in the evening; and, on the following day, the
leaders determined in contended truce who had fought best, buried their
dead triumphantly, and better fortified any weak points, which the events
of the previous day had exposed at their palace corners. Florentine
dispute was apt to centre itself about the gate of St. Peter, {2} the
tower of the cathedral, or the fortress-palace of the Uberti, (the family
of Dante's Bellincion Berti and of Farinata), which occupied the site of
the present Palazzo Vecchio. But the streets of Siena seem to have
afforded better barricade practice. They are as steep as they are narrow—extremely
both; and the projecting stones on their palace fronts, which were left,
in building, to sustain, on occasion, the barricade beams across the
streets, are to this day important features in their architecture.
{Footnote 1: Distinguish always the personal from the religious feud;
personal feud is more treacherous and violent in Italy than in Scotland;
but not the political or religious feud, unless involved with vast
material interests.}
{Footnote 2: Sismondi, vol. ii., chap. ii.; G. Villani, vi., 33.}
98. Such being the general state of matters in Florence, in this year
1248, Frederick writes to the Uberti, who headed the Ghibellines, to
engage them in serious effort to bring the city distinctly to the Imperial
side. He was besieging Parma; and sent his natural son, Frederick, king of
Antioch, with sixteen hundred German knights, to give the Ghibellines
assured preponderance in the next quarrel.
The Uberti took arms before their arrival; rallied all their Ghibelline
friends into a united body, and so attacked and carried the Guelph
barricades, one by one, till their antagonists, driven together by local
defeat, stood in consistency as complete as their own, by the gate of St.
Peter, 'Scheraggio.' Young Frederick, with his German riders, arrived at
this crisis; the Ghibellines opening the gates to him; the Guelphs,
nevertheless, fought at their outmost barricade for four days more; but at
last, tired, withdrew from the city, in a body, on the night of Candlemas,
2nd February, 1248; leaving the Ghibellines and their German friends to
work their pleasure,—who immediately set themselves to throw down
the Guelph palaces, and destroyed six-and-thirty of them, towers and all,
with the good help of Niccola Pisano,—for this is the occasion of
that beautiful piece of new engineering of his.
99. It is the first interference of the Germans in Florentine affairs
which belongs to the real cycle of modern history. Six hundred years
later, a troop of German riders entered Florence again, to restore its
Grand Duke; and our warmhearted and loving English poetess, looking on
from Casa Guidi windows, gives the said Germans many hard words, and
thinks her darling Florentines entirely innocent in the matter. But if she
had had clear eyes, (yeux de lin {1} the Romance of the Rose calls them,)
she would have seen that white-coated cavalry with its heavy guns to be
nothing more than the rear-guard of young Frederick of Antioch; and that
Florence's own Ghibellines had opened her gates to them. Destiny little
regards cost of time; she does her justice at that telescopic distance
just as easily and accurately as close at hand.
{Footnote 1: Lynx.}
100. "Frederick of Antioch." Note the titular coincidence. The
disciples were called Christians first in Antioch; here we have our
lieutenant of Antichrist also named from that town. The anti-Christian
Germans got into Florence upon Sunday morning; the Guelphs fought on till
Wednesday, which was Candlemas;—the Tower of the Death-watch was
thrown down next day. It was so called because it stood on the Piazza of
St John; and all dying people in Florence called on St. John for help; and
looked, if it might be, to the top of this highest and best-built of
towers. The wicked anti-Christian Ghibellines, Nicholas of Pisa helping,
cut the side of it "so that the tower might fall on the Baptistery. But as
it pleased God, for better reverencing of the blessed St. John, the tower,
which was a hundred and eighty feet high, as it was coming down, plainly
appeared to eschew the holy church, and turned aside, and fell right
across the square; at which all the Florentines marvelled, (pious or
impious,) and the people (anti-Ghibelline) were greatly delighted."
101. I have no doubt that this story is apocryphal, not only in its
attribution of these religious scruples to the falling tower; but in its
accusation of the Ghibellines as having definitely intended the
destruction of the Baptistery. It is only modern reformers who feel the
absolute need of enforcing their religious opinions in so practical a
manner. Such a piece of sacrilege would have been revolting to Farinata;
how much more to the group of Florentines whose temper is centrally
represented by Dante's, to all of whom their "bel San Giovanni" was dear,
at least for its beauty, if not for its sanctity. And Niccola himself was
too good a workman to become the instrument of the destruction of so noble
a work,—not to insist on the extreme probability that he was also
too good an engineer to have had his purpose, if once fixed, thwarted by
any tenderness in the conscience of the collapsing tower. The tradition
itself probably arose after the rage of the exiled Ghibellines had half
consented to the destruction, on political grounds, of Florence itself;
but the form it took is of extreme historical value, indicating thus early
at least the suspected existence of passions like those of the Cromwellian
or Garibaldian soldiery in the Florentine noble; and the distinct
character of the Ghibelline party as not only anti-Papal, but profane.
102. Upon the castles, and the persons of their antagonists, however, the
pride, or fear, of the Ghibellines had little mercy; and in their day of
triumph they provoked against themselves nearly every rational as well as
religious person in the commonwealth. They despised too much the force of
the newly-risen popular power, founded on economy, sobriety, and common
sense; and, alike by impertinence and pillage, increased the irritation of
the civil body; until, as aforesaid, on the 20th October, 1250, all the
rich burgesses of Florence took arms; met in the square before the church
of Santa Croce, ("where," says Sismondi, "the republic of the dead is
still assembled today,") thence traversed the city to the palace of the
Ghibelline podesta; forced him to resign; named Uberto of Lucca in his
place, under the title of Captain of the People; divided themselves into
twenty companies, each, in its own district of the city, having its
captain {1} and standard; and elected a council of twelve ancients,
constituting a seniory or signoria, to deliberate on and direct public
affairs.
{Footnote 1: 'Corporal,' literally'.}
103. What a perfectly beautiful republican movement! thinks Sismondi,
seeing, in all this, nothing but the energy of a multitude; and entirely
ignoring the peculiar capacity of this Florentine mob,—capacity of
two virtues, much forgotten by modern republicanism,—order, namely;
and obedience; together with the peculiar instinct of this Florentine
multitude, which not only felt itself to need captains, but knew where to
find them.
104. Hubert of Lucca—How came they, think you, to choose him out
of a stranger city, and that a poorer one than their own? Was there no
Florentine then, of all this rich and eager crowd, who was fit to govern
Florence?
I cannot find any account of this Hubert, Bright mind, of Ducca; Villani
says simply of him, "Fu il primo capitano di Firenze."
They hung a bell for him in the Campanile of the Lion, and gave him the
flag of Florence to bear; and before the day was over, that 20th of
October, he had given every one of the twenty companies their flags also.
And the bearings of the said gonfalons were these. I will give you this
heraldry as far as I can make it out from Villani; it will be very useful
to us afterwards; I leave the Italian when I cannot translate it:—
105. A. Sesto, (sixth part of the city,) of the other side of Arno.
Gonfalon 1. Gules; a ladder, argent.
2. Argent; a scourge, sable.
3. Azure; (una piazza bianca con
nicchi vermigli).
4. Gules; a dragon, vert.
B. Sesto of St. Peter Scheraggio.
1. Azure; a chariot, or.
2. Or; a bull, sable.
3. Argent; a lion rampant, sable.
4. (A lively piece, "pezza gagliarda")
Barry of (how many?) pieces,
argent and sable.
You may as well note at once of this kind of bearing, called 'gagliarda'
by Villani, that these groups of piles, pales, bends, and bars, were
called in English heraldry 'Restrial bearings,'﹃in respect of their
strength and solid substance, which is able to abide the stresse and force
of any triall they shall be put unto.﹄{1} And also that, the number of
bars being uncertain, I assume the bearing to be 'barry,' that is, having
an even number of bars; had it been odd, as of seven bars, it should have
been blazoned, argent; three bars, sable; or, if so divided, sable, three
bars argent.
{Footnote 1: Guillim, sect. ii., chap. 3.}
This lively bearing was St. Pulinari's.
C. Sesto of Borgo.
1. Or; a viper, vert.
2. Argent; a needle, (?) (aguglia)
sable.
3. Vert; a horse unbridled;
draped, argent, a cross,
gules.
D. Sesto of St. Brancazio.
1. Vert; a lion rampant, proper.
2. Argent; a lion rampant, gules.
3. Azure; a lion rampant, argent.
E. Sesto of the Cathedral gates.
1. Azure; a lion (passant?) or.
2. Or; a dragon, vert.
3. Argent; a lion rampant,
azure, crowned, or.
F. Sesto of St. Peter's gates.
1. Or; two keys, gules.
2. An Italian (or more definitely
a Greek and Etruscan bearing;
I do not know how to
blazon it;) concentric bands,
argent and sable. This is
one of the remains of the
Greek expressions of storm;
hail, or the Trinacrian limbs,
being put on the giant's
shields also. It is connected
besides with the Cretan
labyrinth, and the circles of
the Inferno.
3. Parted per fesse, gules and
vai (I don't know if vai
means grey—not a proper
heraldic colour—or vaire).
106. Of course Hubert of Lucca did not determine these bearings, but took
them as he found them, and appointed them for standards; {1} he did the
same for all the country parishes, and ordered them to come into the city
at need. "And in this manner the old people of Florence ordered itself;
and for more strength of the people, they ordered and began to build the
palace which is behind the Badia,—that is to say, the one which is
of dressed stone, with the tower; for before there was no palace of the
commune in Florence, but the signory abode sometimes in one part of the
town, sometimes in another.
{Footnote 1: We will examine afterwards the heraldry of the trades, chap,
xi., Villani.}
107. "And as the people had now taken state and signory on themselves,
they ordered, for greater strength of the people, that all the towers of
Florence—and there were many 180 feet high {1}—should be cut
down to 75 feet, and no more; and so it was done, and with the stones of
them they walled the city on the other side Arno."
{Footnote: 120 braccia.}
108. That last sentence is a significant one. Here is the central
expression of the true burgess or townsman temper,—resolute
maintenance of fortified peace. These are the walls which modern
republicanism throws down, to make boulevards over their ruins.
109. Such new order being taken, Florence remained quiet for full two
months. On the 13th of December, in the same year, died the Emperor
Frederick II.; news of his death did not reach Florence till the 7th
January, 1251. It had chanced, according to Villani, that on the actual
day of his death, his Florentine vice-regent, Rinieri of Montemerlo, was
killed by a piece of the vaulting {1} of his room falling on him as he
slept. And when the people heard of the Emperor's death,﹃which was most
useful and needful for Holy Church, and for our commune,﹄they took the
fall of the roof on his lieutenant as an omen of the extinction of
Imperial authority, and resolved to bring home all their Guelphic exiles,
and that the Ghibellines should be forced to make peace with them. Which
was done, and the peace really lasted for full six months; when, a quarrel
chancing with Ghibelline Pistoja, the Florentines, under a Milanese
podesta, fought their first properly communal and commercial battle, with
great slaughter of Pistojese. Naturally enough, but very unwisely, the
Florentine Ghibellines declined to take part in this battle; whereupon the
people, returning flushed with victory, drove them all out, and
established pure Guelph government in Florence, changing at the same time
the flag of the city from gules, a lily argent, to argent, a lily gules;
but the most ancient bearing of all, simply parted per pale, argent and
gules, remained always on their carroccio of battle,—"Non si muto
mai."
{Footnote 1: "Una volta ch' era sopra la camera."}
110. "Non si muto mai." Villani did not know how true his words were. That
old shield of Florence, parted per pale, argent and gules, (or our own
Saxon Oswald's, parted per pale, or and purpure,) are heraldry changeless
in sign; declaring the necessary balance, in ruling men, of the Rational
and Imaginative powers; pure Alp, and glowing cloud.
Church and State—Pope and Emperor—Clergy and Laity,—all
these are partial, accidental—too often, criminal—oppositions;
but the bodily and spiritual elements, seemingly adverse, remain in
everlasting harmony,
Not less the new bearing of the shield, the red fleur-de-lys, has another
meaning. It is red, not as ecclesiastical, but as free. Not of Guelph
against Ghibelline, but of Labourer against Knight. No more his serf, but
his minister. His duty no more 'servitium,' but 'ministerium,' 'mestier.'
We learn the power of word after word, as of sign after sign, as we follow
the traces of this nascent art. I have sketched for you this lily from the
base of the tower of Giotto. You may judge by the subjects of the
sculpture beside it that it was built just in this fit of commercial
triumph; for all the outer bas-reliefs are of trades.
111. Draw that red lily then, and fix it in your minds as the sign of the
great change in the temper of Florence, and in her laws, in mid-thirteenth
century; and remember also, when you go to Florence and see that mighty
tower of the Palazzo Vecchio (noble still, in spite of the calamitous and
accursed restorations which have smoothed its rugged outline, and effaced
with modern vulgarisms its lovely sculpture)—terminating the shadowy
perspectives of the Uffizii, or dominant over the city seen from Fésole or
Bellosguardo,—that, as the tower of Giotto is the notablest monument
in the world of the Religion of Europe, so, on this tower of the Palazzo
Vecchio, first shook itself to the winds the Lily standard of her liberal,—because
honest,—commerce.
LECTURE V. PAX VOBISCUM.
112. My last lecture ended with a sentence which I thought, myself, rather
pretty, and quite fit for a popular newspaper, about the 'lily standard of
liberal commerce.' But it might occur, and I hope did occur, to some of
you, that it would have been more appropriate if the lily had changed
colour the other way, from red to white, (instead of white to red,) as a
sign of a pacific constitution and kindly national purpose.
113. I believe otherwise, however; and although the change itself was for
the sake of change merely, you may see in it, I think, one of the
historical coincidences which contain true instruction for us.
Quite one of the chiefest art-mistakes and stupidities of men has been
their tendency to dress soldiers in red clothes, and monks, or pacific
persons, in black, white, or grey ones. At least half of that mental bias
of young people, which sustains the wickedness of war among us at this
day, is owing to the prettiness of uniforms. Make all Hussars black, all
Guards black, all troops of the line black; dress officers and men, alike,
as you would public executioners; and the number of candidates for
commissions will be greatly diminished. Habitually, on the contrary, you
dress these destructive rustics and their officers in scarlet and gold,
but give your productive rustics no costume of honour or beauty; you give
your peaceful student a costume which he tucks up to his waist, because he
is ashamed of it; and dress your pious rectors, and your sisters of
charity, in black, as if it were their trade instead of the
soldier's to send people to hell, and their own destiny to arrive there.
114. But the investiture of the lily of Florence with scarlet is a symbol,—unintentional,
observe, but not the less notable,—of the recovery of human sense
and intelligence in this matter. The reign of war was past; this was the
sign of it;—the red glow, not now of the Towers of Dis, but of the
Carita, "che appena fora dentro al fuoco nota." And a day is coming, be
assured, when the kings of Europe will dress their peaceful troops
beautifully; will clothe their peasant girls﹃in scarlet, with other
delights,﹄and "put on ornaments of gold upon their apparel;" when
the crocus and the lily will not be the only living things dressed
daintily in our land, and the glory of the wisest monarchs be indeed, in
that their people, like themselves, shall be, at least in some dim
likeness, "arrayed like one of these."
115. But as for the immediate behaviour of Florence herself, with her new
standard, its colour was quite sufficiently significant in that old
symbolism, when the first restrial bearing was drawn by dying fingers
dipped in blood. The Guelphic revolution had put her into definite
political opposition with her nearest, and therefore,—according to
the custom and Christianity of the time,—her hatefullest,
neighbours,—Pistoja, Pisa, Siena, and Volterra. What glory might not
be acquired, what kind purposes answered, by making pacific mercantile
states also of those benighted towns! Besides, the death of the Emperor
had thrown his party everywhere into discouragement; and what was the use
of a flag which flew no farther than over the new palazzo?
116. Accordingly, in the next year, the pacific Florentines began by
ravaging the territory of Pistoja; then attacked the Pisans at Pontadera,
and took 3000 prisoners; and finished by traversing, and eating up all
that could be ate in, the country of Siena; besides beating the Sienese
under the castle of Montalcino. Returning in triumph after these
benevolent operations, they resolved to strike a new piece of money in
memory of them,—the golden Florin!
117. This coin I have placed in your room of study, to be the first of the
series of coins which I hope to arrange for you, not chronologically, but
for the various interest, whether as regards art or history, which they
should possess in your general studies. "The Florin of Florence," (says
Sismondi),﹃through all the monetary revolutions of all neighbouring
countries, and while the bad faith of governments adulterated their coin
from one end of Europe to the other, has always remained the same; it is,
to-day,﹄(I don't know when, exactly, he wrote this,—but it doesn't
matter),﹃of the same weight, and bears the same name and the same stamp,
which it did when it was struck in 1252.﹄It was gold of the purest title
(24 carats), weighed the eighth of an ounce, and carried, as you see, on
one side the image of St. John Baptist, on the other the Fleur-de-lys. It
is the coin which Chaucer takes for the best representation of beautiful
money in the Pardoner's Tale: this, in his judgment, is the fairest mask
of Death. Villani's relation of its moral and commercial effect at Tunis
is worth translating, being in the substance of it, I doubt not, true.
118. "And these new florins beginning to scatter through the world, some
of them got to Tunis, in Barbary; and the King of Tunis, who was a worthy
and wise lord, was greatly pleased with them, and had them tested; and
finding them of fine gold, he praised them much, and had the legend on
them interpreted to him,—to wit, on one side 'St. John Baptist,' on
the other 'Florentia.' So seeing they were pieces of Christian money, he
sent for the Pisan merchants, who were free of his port, and much before
the King (and also the Florentines traded in Tunis through Pisan agents),—{see
these hot little Pisans, how they are first everywhere,}—and asked
of them what city it was among the Christians which made the said florins.
And the Pisans answered in spite and envy, 'They are our land Arabs.' The
King answered wisely,﹃It does not appear to me Arab's money; you Pisans,
what golden money have you got?﹄Then they were confused, and knew
not what to answer. So he asked if there was any Florentine among them.
And there was found a merchant from the other-side-Arno, by name Peter
Balducci, discreet and wise. The King asked him of the state and being of
Florence, of which the Pisans made their Arabs,—who answered him
wisely, showing the power and magnificence of Florence; and how Pisa, in
comparison, was not, either in land or people, the half of Florence; and
that they had no golden money; and that the gold of which those florins
had been made was gained by the Florentines above and beyond them, by many
victories. Wherefore the said Pisans were put to shame, and the King, both
by reason of the florin, and for the words of our wise citizen, made the
Florentines free, and appointed for them their own Fondaco, and church, in
Tunis, and gave them privileges like the Pisans. And this we know for a
truth from the same Peter, having been in company with him at the office
of the Priors."
119. I cannot tell you what the value of the piece was at this time: the
sentence with which Sismondi concludes his account of it being only useful
as an example of the total ignorance of the laws of currency in which many
even of the best educated persons at the present day remain.
"Its value," he says always the same, "answers to eleven francs forty
centimes of France."
But all that can be scientifically said of any piece of money is that it
contains a given weight of a given metal. Its value in other coins, other
metals, or other general produce, varies not only from day to day, but
from instant to instant.
120. With this coin of Florence ought in justice to be ranked the Venetian
zecchin; {1} but of it I can only thus give you account in another place,—for
I must at once go on now to tell you the first use I find recorded, as
being made by the Florentines of their new money.
{Footnote 1: In connection with the Pisans' insulting intention by their
term of Arabs, remember that the Venetian 'zecca,' (mint) came from the
Arabic 'sehk,' the steel die used in coinage.}
They pursued in the years 1253 and 1254 their energetic promulgation of
peace. They ravaged the lands of Pistoja so often, that the Pistojese
submitted themselves, on condition of receiving back their Guelph exiles,
and admitting a Florentine garrison into Pistoja. Next they attacked Monte
Reggione, the March-fortress of the Sienese; and pressed it so vigorously
that Siena was fain to make peace too, on condition of ceasing her
alliance with the Ghibellines. Next they ravaged the territory of
Volterra: the townspeople, confident in the strength of their rock
fortress, came out to give battle; the Florentines beat them up the hill,
and entered the town gates with the fugitives.
121. And, for note to this sentence, in my long-since-read volume of
Sismondi, I find a cross-fleury at the bottom of the page, with the date
1254 underneath it; meaning that I was to remember that year as the
beginning of Christian warfare. For little as you may think it, and
grotesquely opposed as this ravaging of their neighbours' territories may
seem to their pacific mission, this Florentine army is fighting in
absolute good faith. Partly self-deceived, indeed, by their own ambition,
and by their fiery natures, rejoicing in the excitement of battle, they
have nevertheless, in this their "year of victories,"—so they ever
afterwards called it,—no occult or malignant purpose. At least,
whatever is occult or malignant is also unconscious; not now in cruel, but
in kindly jealousy of their neighbours, and in a true desire to
communicate and extend to them the privileges of their own new artizan
government, the Trades of Florence have taken arms. They are justly proud
of themselves; rightly assured of the wisdom of the change they have made;
true to each other for the time, and confident in the future. No army ever
fought in better cause, or with more united heart. And accordingly they
meet with no check, and commit no error; from tower to tower of the field
fortresses,—from gate to gate of the great cities,—they march
in one continuous and daily more splendid triumph, yet in gentle and
perfect discipline; and now, when they have entered Volterra with her
fugitives, after stress of battle, not a drop of blood is shed, nor a
single house pillaged, nor is any other condition of peace required than
the exile of the Ghibelline nobles. You may remember, as a symbol of the
influence of Christianity in this result, that the Bishop of Volterra,
with his clergy, came out in procession to meet them as they began to run
{1} the streets, and obtained this mercy; else the old habits of pillage
would have prevailed.
{Footnote 1: Corsona la citta senza contesto niuno."—Villani.}
122. And from Volterra, the Florentine army entered on the territory of
Pisa; and now with so high prestige, that the Pisans at once sent
ambassadors to them with keys in their hands, in token of submission. And
the Florentines made peace with them, on condition that the Pisans should
let the Florentine merchandize pass in and out without tax;—should
use the same weights as Florence,—the same cloth measure,—and
the same alloy of money.
123. You see that Mr. Adam Smith was not altogether the originator of the
idea of free trade; and six hundred years have passed without bringing
Europe generally to the degree of mercantile intelligence, as to weights
and currency, which Florence had in her year of victories.
The Pisans broke this peace two years afterwards, to help the Emperor
Manfred; whereupon the Florentines attacked them instantly again; defeated
them on the Serchio, near Lucca; entered the Pisan territory by the Val di
Serchio; and there, cutting down a great pine tree, struck their florins
on the stump of it, putting, for memory, under the feet of the St. John, a
trefoil "in guise of a little tree." And note here the difference between
artistic and mechanical coinage. The Florentines, using pure gold, and
thin, can strike their coin anywhere, with only a wooden anvil, and their
engraver is ready on the instant to make such change in the stamp as may
record any new triumph. Consider the vigour, popularity, pleasantness of
an art of coinage thus ductile to events, and easy in manipulution.
124. It is to be observed also that a thin gold coinage like that of the
English angel, and these Italian zecchins, is both more convenient and
prettier than the massive gold of the Greeks, often so small that it drops
through the fingers, and, if of any size, inconveniently large in value.
125. It was in the following year, 1255, that the Florentines made the
noblest use of their newly struck florins, so far as I know, ever recorded
in any history; and a Florentine citizen made as noble refusal of them.
You will find the two stories in Giovanni Villani, Book 6th, chapters 61,
62. One or two important facts are added by Sismondi, but without
references. I take his statement as on the whole trustworthy, using
Villani's authority wherever it reaches; one or two points I have farther
to explain to you myself as I go on.
126. The first tale shows very curiously the mercenary and independent
character of warfare, as it now was carried on by the great chiefs,
whether Guelph or Ghibelline. The Florentines wanted to send a troop of
five hundred horse to assist Orvieto, a Guelph town, isolated on its rock,
and at present harrassed upon it. They gave command of this troop to the
Knight Guido Guerra de' Conti Guidi, and he and his riders set out for
Orvieto by the Umbrian road, through Arezzo, which was at peace with
Florence, though a Ghibelline town. The Guelph party within the town asked
help from the passing Florentine battalion; and Guido Guerra, without any
authority for such action, used the troop of which he was in command in
their favour, and drove out the Ghibellines. Sismondi does not notice what
is quite one of the main points in the matter, that this troop of horse
must have been mainly composed of Count Guido's own retainers, and not of
Florentine citizens, who would not have cared to leave their business on
such a far-off quest as this help to Orvieto. However, Arezzo is thus
brought over to the Florentine interest; and any other Italian state would
have been sure, while it disclaimed the Count's independent action, to
keep the advantage of it. Not so Florence. She is entirely resolved, in
these years of victory, to do justice to all men so far she understands
it; and in this case it will give her some trouble to do it, and worse,—cost
her some of her fine new florins. For her counter-mandate is quite
powerless with Guido Guerra. He has taken Arezzo mainly with his own men,
and means to stay there, thinking that the Florentines, if even they do
not abet him, will take no practical steps against him. But he does not
know this newly risen clan of military merchants, who quite clearly
understand what honesty means, and will put themselves out of their way to
keep their faith. Florence calls out her trades instantly, and with gules,
a dragon vert, and or, a bull sable, they march, themselves, angrily up
the Val d'Arno, replace the adverse Ghibellines in Arezzo, and send Master
Guido de' Conti Guido about his business. But the prettiest and most
curious part of the whole story is their equity even to him, after he had
given them all this trouble. They entirely recognize the need he is under
of getting meat, somehow, for the mouths of these five hundred riders of
his; also they hold him still their friend, though an unmanageable one;
and admit with praise what of more or less patriotic and Guelphic
principle may be at the root of his disobedience. So when he claims twelve
thousand lire,—roughly, some two thousand pounds of money at present
value,—from the Guelphs of Arezzo for his service, and the Guelphs,
having got no good of it, owing to this Florentine interference, object to
paying him, the Florentines themselves lend them the money,—and are
never paid a farthing of it back.
127. There is a beautiful "investment of capital" for your modern merchant
to study! No interest thought of, and little hope of ever getting back the
principal. And yet you will find that there were no mercantile "panics,"
in Florence in those days, nor failing bankers, {1} nor "clearings out of
this establishment—any reasonable offer accepted."
{Footnote: Some account of the state of modern British business in this
kind will be given, I hope, in some number of "Fors Clavigera" for this
year, 1874.}
128. But the second story, of a private Florentine citizen, is better
still.
In that campaign against Pisa in which the florins were struck on the root
of pine, the conditions of peace had been ratified by the surrender to
Florence of the Pisan fortress of Mutrona, which commanded a tract of
seaboard below Pisa, of great importance for the Tuscan trade. The
Florentines had stipulated for the right not only of holding, but of
destroying it, if they chose; and in their Council of Ancients, after long
debate, it was determined to raze it, the cost of its garrison being
troublesome, and the freedom of seaboard all that the city wanted. But the
Pisans feeling the power that the fortress had against them in case of
future war, and doubtful of the issue of council at Florence, sent a
private negotiator to the member of the Council of Ancients who was known
to have most influence, though one of the poorest of them, Aldobrandino
Ottobuoni; and offered him four thousand golden florins if he would get
the vote passed to raze Mutrona. The vote had passed the evening
before. Aldobrandino dismissed the Pisan ambassador in silence, returned
instantly into the council, and without saying anything of the offer that
had been made to him, got them to reconsider their vote, and showed them
such reason for keeping Mutrona in its strength, that the vote for its
destruction was rescinded. "And note thou, oh reader," says Villani, "the
virtue of such a citizen, who, not being rich in substance, had yet such
continence and loyalty for his state."
129. You might, perhaps, once, have thought me detaining you needlessly
with these historical details, little bearing, it is commonly supposed, on
the subject of art. But you are, I trust, now in some degree persuaded
that no art, Florentine or any other, can be understood without knowing
these sculptures and mouldings of the national soul. You remember I first
begun this large digression when it became a question with us why some of
Giovanni Pisano's sepulchral work had been destroyed at Perugia. And now
we shall get our first gleam of light on the matter, finding similar
operations carried on in Florence. For a little while after this speech in
the Council of Ancients, Aldobrandino died, and the people, at public
cost, built him a tomb of marble, "higher than any other" in the church of
Santa Reparata, engraving on it these verses, which I leave you to
construe, for I cannot:—
Fons est supremus Aldobrandino amoenus.
Ottoboni natus, a bono civita datus.
Only I suppose the pretty word 'amoenus' may be taken as marking the
delightfulness and sweetness of character which had won all men's love,
more, even, than their gratitude.
130. It failed of its effect, however, on the Tuscan aristocratic mind.
For, when, after the battle of the Arbia, the Ghibellines had again their
own way in Florence, though Ottobuoni had been then dead three years, they
beat down his tomb, pulled the dead body out of it, dragged it—by
such tenure as it might still possess—through the city, and threw
the fragments of it into ditches. It is a memorable parallel to the
treatment of the body of Cromwell by our own Cavaliers; and indeed it
seems to me one of the highest forms of laudatory epitaph upon a man, that
his body should be thus torn from its rest. For he can hardly have spent
his life better than in drawing on himself the kind of enmity which can so
be gratified; and for the most loving of lawgivers, as of princes, the
most enviable and honourable epitaph has always been
{Greek: "oide plitai anton emisoun anton."
131. Not but that pacific Florence, in her pride of victory, was beginning
to show unamiableness of temper also, on her so equitable side. It is
perhaps worth noticing, for the sake of the name of Correggio, that in
1257, when Matthew Correggio, of Parma, was the Podesta of Florence, the
Florentines determined to destroy the castle and walls of Poggibonzi,
suspected of Ghibelline tendency, though the Poggibonzi people came with
"coregge in collo," leathern straps round their necks, to ask that their
cattle might be spared. And the heartburnings between the two parties went
on, smouldering hotter and hotter, till July, 1258, when the people having
discovered secret dealings between the Uberti and the Emperor Manfred, and
the Uberti refusing to obey citation to the popular tribunals, the trades
ran to arms, attacked the Uberti palace, killed a number of their people,
took prisoner, Uberto of the Uberti, Hubert of the Huberts, or Bright-mind
of the Bright-minds, with 'Mangia degl' Infangati, ('Gobbler {1} of the
dirty ones' this knight's name sounds like,)—and after they had
confessed their guilt, beheaded them in St. Michael's corn-market; and all
the rest of the Uberti and Ghibelline families were driven out of
Florence, and their palaces pulled down, and the walls towards Siena built
with the stones of them; and two months afterwards, the people suspecting
the Abbot of Vallombrosa of treating with the Ghibellines, took him, and
tortured him; and he confessing under torture,﹃at the cry of the people,
they beheaded him in the square of St. Apollinare.﹄For which unexpected
piece of clangorous impiety the Florentines were excommunicated, besides
drawing upon themselves the steady enmity of Pavia, the Abbot's native
town; "and indeed people say the Abbot was innocent, though he belonged to
a great Ghibelline house. And for this sin, and for many others done by
the wicked people, many wise persons say that God, for Divine judgment,
permitted upon the said people the revenge and slaughter of Monteaperti."
{Footnote: At least, the compound 'Mangia-pane,' 'munch-bread,' stands
still for a good-for-nothing fellow.}
132. The sentence which I have last read introduces, as you must at once
have felt, a new condition of things. Generally, I have spoken of the
Ghibellines as infidel, or impious; and for the most part they represent,
indeed, the resistance of kingly to priestly power. But, in this action of
Florence, we have the rise of another force against the Church, in the end
to be much more fatal to it, that of popular intelligence and popular
passion. I must for the present, however, return to our immediate
business; and ask you to take note of the effect, on actually existing
Florentine architecture, of the political movements of the ten years we
have been studying.
133. In the revolution of Candlemas, 1248, the successful Ghibellines
throw down thirty-six of the Guelph palaces.
And in the revolution of July, 1258, the successful Guelphs throw down all
the Ghibelline palaces.
Meantime the trades, as against the Knights Castellans, have thrown down
the tops of all the towers above seventy-five feet high.
And we shall presently have a proposal, after the battle of the Arbia, to
throw down Florence altogether.
134. You think at first that this is remarkably like the course of
republican reformations in the present day? But there is a wide
difference. In the first place, the palaces and towers are not thrown down
in mere spite or desire of ruin, but after quite definite experience of
their danger to the State, and positive dejection of boiling lead and
wooden logs from their machicolations upon the heads below. In the second
place, nothing is thrown down without complete certainty on the part of
the overthrowers that they are able, and willing, to build as good or
better things instead; which, if any like conviction exist in the minds of
modern republicans, is a wofully ill-founded one: and lastly, these
abolitions of private wealth were coincident with a widely spreading
disposition to undertake, as I have above noticed, works of public
utility, from which no dividends were to be received by any of the
shareholders; and for the execution of which the builders received
no commission on the cost, but payment at the rate of so much a day,
carefully adjusted to the exertion of real power and intelligence.
135. We must not, therefore, without qualification blame, though we may
profoundly regret, the destructive passions of the thirteenth century. The
architecture of the palaces thus destroyed in Florence contained examples
of the most beautiful round-arched work that had been developed by the
Norman schools; and was in some cases adorned with a barbaric splendour,
and fitted into a majesty of strength which, so far as I can conjecture
the effect of it from the few now existing traces, must have presented
some of the most impressive aspects of street edifice ever existent among
civil societies.
136. It may be a temporary relief for you from the confusion of following
the giddy successions of Florentine temper, if I interrupt, in this place,
my history of the city by some inquiry into technical points relating to
the architecture of these destroyed palaces. Their style is familiar to
us, indeed, in a building of which it is difficult to believe the early
date,—the leaning tower of Pisa. The lower stories of it are of the
twelfth century, and the open arcades of the cathedrals of Pisa and Lucca,
as well as the lighter construction of the spire of St. Niccol, at Pisa,
(though this was built in continuation of the older style by Niccola
himself,) all represent to you, though in enriched condition, the general
manner of buidling in palaces of the Norman period in Val d'Arno. That of
the Tosinghi, above the old market in Florence, is especially mentioned by
Villani, as more than a hundred feet in height, entirely built with little
pillars, (colonnelli,) of marble. On their splendid masonry was founded
the exquisiteness of that which immediately succeeded them, of which the
date is fixed by definite examples both in Verona and Florence, and which
still exists in noble masses in the retired streets and courts of either
city; too soon superseded, in the great thoroughfares, by the effeminate
and monotonous luxury of Venetian renaissance, or by the heaps of quarried
stone which rise into the ruggedness of their native cliffs, in the Pitti
and Strozzi palaces.
LECTURE VI. MARBLE COUCHANT.
137. I told you in my last lecture that the exquisiteness of Florentine
thirteenth century masonry was founded on the strength and splendour of
that which preceded it.
I use the word 'founded' in a literal as well as figurative sense. While
the merchants, in their year of victories, threw down the walls of the
war-towers, they as eagerly and diligently set their best craftsmen to
lift higher the walls of their churches. For the most part, the Early
Norman or Basilican forms were too low to please them in their present
enthusiasm. Their pride, as well as their piety, desired that these stones
of their temples might be goodly; and all kinds of junctions, insertions,
refittings, and elevations were undertaken; which, the genius of the
people being always for mosaic, are so perfectly executed, and mix up
twelfth and thirteenth century work in such intricate harlequinade, that
it is enough to drive a poor antiquary wild.
138. I have here in my hand, however, a photograph of a small church,
which shows you the change at a glance, and attests it in a notable
manner.
You know Hubert of Lucca was the first captain of the Florentine people,
and the march in which they struck their florin on the pine trunk was
through Lucca, on Pisa.
Now here is a little church in Lucca, of which the lower half of the
façade is of the twelfth century, and the top, built by the Florentines,
in the thirteenth, and sealed for their own by two fleur-de-lys, let into
its masonry. The most important difference, marking the date, is in the
sculpture of the heads which carry the archivolts. But the most palpable
difference is in the Cyclopean simplicity of irregular bedding in the
lower story; and the delicate bands of alternate serpentine and marble,
which follow the horizontal or couchant placing of the stones above.
139. Those of you who, interested in English Gothic, have visited Tuscany,
are, I think, always offended at first, if not in permanence, by these
horizontal stripes of her marble walls. Twenty-two years ago I quoted, in
vol. i. of the "Stones of Venice," Professor Willis's statement that﹃a
practice more destructive of architectural grandeur could hardly be
conceived;﹄and I defended my favourite buildings against that judgement,
first by actual comparison in the plate opposite the page, of a piece of
them with an example of our modern grandeur; secondly, (vol. i., chap.
v.,) by a comparison of their aspect with that of the building of the
grandest piece of wall in the Alps,—that Matterhorn in which you all
have now learned to take some gymnastic interest; and thirdly, (vol. i.,
chap. xxvi.,) by reference to the use of barred colours, with delight, by
Giotto and all subsequent colourists.
140. But it did not then occur to me to ask, much as I always disliked the
English Perpendicular, what would have been the effect on the spectator's
mind, had the buildings been striped vertically instead of horizontally;
nor did I then know, or in the least imagine, how much practical
need there was for reference from the structure of the edifice to that of
the cliff; and how much the permanence, as well as propriety, of structure
depended on the stones being couchant in the wall, as they had been
in the quarry: to which subject I wish to-day to direct your attention.
141. You will find stated with as much clearness as I am able, in the
first and fifth lectures in﹃Aratra Pentelíci,﹄the principles of
architectural design to which, in all my future teaching, I shall have
constantly to appeal; namely, that architecture consists distinctively in
the adaptation of form to resist force;—that, practically, it may be
always thought of as doing this by the ingenious adjustment of various
pieces of solid material; that the perception of this ingenious
adjustment, or structure, is to be always joined with our admiration of
the superadded ornament; and that all delightful ornament is the honouring
of such useful structures; but that the beauty of the ornament itself is
independent of the structure, and arrived at by powers of mind of a very
different class from those which are necessary to give skill in
architecture proper.
142. During the course of this last summer I have been myself very
directly interested in some of the quite elementary processes of true
architecture. I have been building a little pier into Coniston Lake, and
various walls and terraces in a steeply sloping garden, all which had to
be constructed of such rough stones as lay nearest. Under the dextrous
hands of a neighbour farmer's son, the pier projected, and the walls rose,
as if enchanted; every stone taking its proper place, and the loose dyke
holding itself as firmly upright as if the gripping cement of the
Florentine towers had fastened it. My own better acquaintance with the
laws of gravity and of statics did not enable me, myself, to build six
inches of dyke that would stand; and all the decoration possible under the
circumstances consisted in turning the lichened sides of the stones
outwards. And yet the noblest conditions of building in the world are
nothing more than the gradual adornment, by play of the imagination, of
materials first arranged by this natural instinct of adjustment. You must
not lose sight of the instinct of building, but you must not think the
play of the imagination depends upon it. Intelligent laying of stones is
always delightful; but the fancy must not be limited to its contemplation.
{Illustration: PLATE V.—DOOR OF THE BAPTISTERY. PISA.}
143. In the more elaborate architecture of my neighbourhood, I have taken
pleasure these many years; one of the first papers I ever wrote on
architecture was a study of the Westmoreland cottage;—properly,
observe, the cottage of West-mereland, of the land of western lakes. Its
principal feature is the projecting porch at its door, formed by two rough
slabs of Coniston slate, set in a blunt gable; supported, if far
projecting, by two larger masses for uprights. A disciple of Mr. Pugin
would delightedly observe that the porch of St. Zeno at Verona was nothing
more than the decoration of this construction; but you do not suppose that
the first idea of putting two stones together to keep off rain was all on
which the sculptor of St. Zeno wished to depend for your entertainment.
144. Perhaps you may most clearly understand the real connection between
structure and decoration by considering all architecture as a kind of
book, which must be properly bound indeed, and in which the illumination
of the pages has distinct reference in all its forms to the breadth of the
margins and length of the sentences; but is itself free to follow its own
quite separate and higher objects of design.
145. Thus, for instance, in the architecture which Niccola was occupied
upon, when a boy, under his Byzantine master. Here is the door of the
Baptistery at Pisa, again by Mr. Severn delightfully enlarged for us from
a photograph. {1} The general idea of it is a square-headed opening in a
solid wall, faced by an arch carried on shafts. And the ornament does
indeed follow this construction so that the eye catches it with ease,—but
under what arbitrary conditions! In the square door, certainly the
side-posts of it are as important members as the lintel they carry; but
the lintel is carved elaborately, and the side-posts left blank. Of the
facing arch and shaft, it would be similarly difficult to say whether the
sustaining vertical, or sustained curve, were the more important member of
the construction; but the decorator now reverses the distribution of his
care, adorns the vertical member with passionate elaboration, and runs a
narrow band, of comparatively uninteresting work, round the arch. Between
this outer shaft and inner door is a square pilaster, of which the
architect carves one side, and lets the other alone. It is followed by a
smaller shaft and arch, in which he reverses his treatment of the outer
order by cutting the shaft delicately and the arch deeply. Again, whereas
in what is called the decorated construction of English Gothic, the
pillars would have been left plain and the spandrils deep cut,—here,
are we to call it decoration of the construction, when the pillars are
carved and the spandrils left plain? Or when, finally, either these
spandril spaces on each side of the arch, or the corresponding slopes of
the gable, are loaded with recumbent figures by the sculptors of the
renaissance, are we to call, for instance, Michael Angelo's Dawn and
Twilight, only the decorations of the sloping plinths of a tomb, or trace
to a geometrical propriety the subsequent rule in Italy that no window
could be properly complete for living people to look out of, without
having two stone people sitting on the corners of it above? I have heard
of charming young ladies occasionally, at very crowded balls, sitting on
the stairs,—would you call them, in that case, only decorations of
the construction of the staircase?
{Footnote 1: Plate 5 is from the photograph itself; the enlarged drawing
showed the arrangement of parts more clearly, but necessarily omitted
detail which it is better here to retain.}
146. You will find, on consideration, the ultimate fact to be that to
which I have just referred you;—my statement in "Aratra," that the
idea of a construction originally useful is retained in good architecture,
through all the amusement of its ornamentation; as the idea of the proper
function of any piece of dress ought to be retained through its changes in
form or embroidery. A good spire or porch retains the first idea of a roof
usefully covering a space, as a Norman high cap or elongated Quaker's
bonnet retains the original idea of a simple covering for the head; and
any extravagance of subsequent fancy may be permitted, so long as the
notion of use is not altogether lost. A girl begins by wearing a plain
round hat to shade her from the sun; she ties it down over her ears on a
windy day; presently she decorates the edge of it, so bent, with flowers
in front, or the riband that ties it with a bouquet at the side, and it
becomes a bonnet. This decorated construction may be discreetly changed,
by endless fashion, so long as it does not become a clearly useless riband
round the middle of the head, or a clearly useless saucer on the top of
it.
147. Again, a Norman peasant may throw up the top of her cap into a peak,
or a Bernese one put gauze wings at the side of it, and still be dressed
with propriety, so long as her hair is modestly confined, and her ears
healthily protected, by the matronly safeguard of the real construction.
She ceases to be decorously dressed only when the material becomes too
flimsy to answer such essential purpose, and the flaunting pendants or
ribands can only answer the ends of coquetry or ostentation. Similarly, an
architect may deepen or enlarge, in fantastic exaggeration, his original
Westmoreland gable into Rouen porch, and his original square roof into
Coventry spire; but he must not put within his splendid porch, a little
door where two persons cannot together get in, nor cut his spire away into
hollow filigree, and mere ornamental perviousness to wind and rain.
148. Returning to our door at Pisa, we shall find these general questions
as to the distribution of ornament much confused with others as to its
time and style. We are at once, for instance, brought to a pause as to the
degree in which the ornamentation was once carried out in the doors
themselves. Their surfaces were, however, I doubt not, once recipients of
the most elaborate ornament, as in the Baptistery of Florence; and in
later bronze, by John of Bologna, in the door of the Pisan cathedral
opposite this one. And when we examine the sculpture and placing of the
lintel, which at first appeared the most completely Greek piece of
construction of the whole, we find it so far advanced in many Gothic
characters, that I once thought it a later interpolation cutting the inner
pilasters underneath their capitals, while the three statues set on it are
certainly, by several tens of years, later still.
149. How much ten years did at this time, one is apt to forget; and how
irregularly the slower minds of the older men would surrender themselves,
sadly, or awkwardly, to the vivacities of their pupils. The only wonder is
that it should be usually so easy to assign conjectural dates within
twenty or thirty years; but, at Pisa, the currents of tradition and
invention run with such cross eddies, that I often find myself utterly at
fault. In this lintel, for instance, there are two pieces separated by a
narrower one, on which there has been an inscription, of which in my
enlarged plate you may trace, though, I fear, not decipher, the few
letters that remain. The uppermost of these stones is nearly pure in its
Byzantine style; the lower, already semi-Gothic. Both are exquisite of
their kind, and we will examine them closely; but first note these points
about the stones of them. We are discussing work at latest of the
thirteenth century. Our loss of the inscription is evidently owing to the
action of the iron rivets which have been causelessly used at the two
horizontal joints. There was nothing whatever in the construction to make
these essential, and, but for this error, the entire piece of work, as
delicate as an ivory tablet, would be as intelligible to-day as when it
was laid in its place. {1}
{Footnote: Plates 6 and 7 give, in greater clearness, the sculpture of
this lintel, for notes on which see Appendix.}
150. Laid. I pause upon this word, for it is an important one. And
I must devote the rest of this lecture to consideration merely of what
follows from the difference between laying a stone and setting it up,
whether we regard sculpture or construction. The subject is so wide, I
scarcely know how to approach it. Perhaps it will be the pleasantest way
to begin if I read you a letter from one of yourselves to me. A very
favourite pupil, who travels third class always, for sake of better
company, wrote to me the other day:﹃One of my fellow-travellers, who was
a builder, or else a master mason, told me that the way in which red
sandstone buildings last depends entirely on the way in which the stone is
laid. It must lie as it does in the quarry; but he said that very few
workmen could always tell the difference between the joints of planes of
cleavage and the—something else which I couldn't catch,—by
which he meant, I suppose planes of stratification. He said too that some
people, though they were very particular
{Illustration: PLATE VI.—THE STORY OF ST. JOHN. ADVENT.}
{Illustration: PLATE VII.—THE STORY OF ST. JOHN. DEPARTURE.}
about having the stone laid well, allowed blocks to stand in the rain the
wrong way up, and that they never recovered one wetting. The stone of the
same quarry varies much, and he said that moss will grow immediately on
good stone, but not on bad. How curious,—nature helping the best
workman!﹄Thus far my favourite pupil.
151. 'Moss will grow on the best stone.' The first thing your modern
restorer would do is to scrape it off; and with it, whatever knitted
surface, half moss root, protects the interior stone. Have you ever
considered the infinite functions of protection to mountain form exercised
by the mosses and lichens? It will perhaps be refreshing to you after our
work among the Pisan marbles and legends, if we have a lecture or two on
moss. Meantime I need not tell you that it would not be a satisfactory
natural arrangement if moss grew on marble, and that all fine workmanship
in marble implies equal exquisiteness of surface and edge.
152. You will observe also that the importance of laying the stone in the
building as it lay in its bed was from the first recognised by all good
northern architects, to such extent that to lay stones 'en delit,' or in a
position out of their bedding, is a recognized architectural term in
France, where all structural building takes its rise; and in that form of
'delit' the word gets most curiously involved with the Latin delictum and
deliquium. It would occupy the time of a whole lecture if I entered into
the confused relations of the words derived from lectus, liquidus,
delinquo, diliquo, and deliquesco; and of the still more confused, but
beautifully confused, (and enriched by confusion,) forms of idea, whether
respecting morality or marble, arising out of the meanings of these words:
the notions of a bed gathered or strewn for the rest, whether of rocks or
men; of the various states of solidity and liquidity connected with
strength, or with repose; and of the duty of staying quiet in a place, or
under a law, and the mischief of leaving it, being all fastened in the
minds of early builders, and of the generations of men for whom they
built, by the unescapable bearing of geological laws on their life; by the
ease or difficulty of splitting rocks, by the variable consistency of the
fragments split, by the innumerable questions occurring practically as to
bedding and cleavage in every kind of stone, from tufo to granite, and by
the unseemly, or beautiful, destructive, or protective, effects of
decomposition. {1} The same processes of time which cause your Oxford
oolite to flake away like the leaves of a mouldering book, only warm with
a glow of perpetually deepening gold the marbles of Athens and Verona; and
the same laws of chemical change which reduce the granites of Dartmoor to
porcelain clay, bind the sands of Coventry into stones which can be built
up halfway to the sky.
{Footnote 1: This passage cannot but seem to the reader loose and
fantastic. I have elaborate notes, and many an unwritten thought, on these
matters, but no time or strength to develop them. The passage is not
fantastic, but the rapid index of what I know to be true in all the named
particulars. But compare, for mere rough illustration of what I mean, the
moral ideas relating to the stone of Jacob's pillow, or the tradition of
it, with those to which French Flamboyant Gothic owes its character.}
153. But now, as to the matter immediately before us, observe what a
double question arises about laying stones as they lie in the quarry.
First, how dothey lie in the quarry? Secondly, how can we lay them
so in every part of our building?
A. How do they lie in the quarry? Level, perhaps, at Stonesfield and
Coventry; but at an angle of 45° at Carrara; and for aught I know, of 90°
in Paros or Pentelicus. Also, the bedding is of prime importance at
Coventry, but the cleavage at Coniston. {1}
{Footnote 1: There are at least four definite cleavages at Coniston,
besides joints. One of these cleavages furnishes the Coniston slate of
commerce; another forms the ranges of Wetherlam and Yewdale crag; a third
cuts these ranges to pieces, striking from north-west to south-east; and a
fourth into other pieces, from north-east to south-west.}
B. And then, even if we know what the quarry bedding is, how are we to
keep it always in our building? You may lay the stones of a wall carefully
level, but how will you lay those of an arch? You think these, perhaps,
trivial, or merely curious questions. So far from it, the fact that while
the bedding in Normandy is level, that at Carrara is steep, and that the
forces which raised the beds of Carrara crystallized them also, so that
the cleavage which is all-important in the stones of my garden wall is of
none in the duomo of Pisa,—simply determined the possibility of the
existence of Pisan sculpture at all, and regulated the whole life and
genius of Nicholas the Pisan and of Christian art. And, again, the fact
that you can put stones in true bedding in a wall, but cannot in an arch,
determines the structural transition from classical to Gothic
architecture.
154. The structural transition, observe; only a part, and that not
altogether a coincident part, of the moral transition. Read
carefully, if you have time, the articles 'Pierre' and 'Meneau' in M.
Violet le Duc's Dictionary of Architecture, and you will know everything
that is of importance in the changes dependent on the mere qualities of matter.
I must, however, try to set in your view also the relative acting
qualities of mind.
You will find that M. Violet le Duc traces all the forms of Gothic tracery
to the geometrical and practically serviceable development of the stone
'chassis,' chasing, or frame, for the glass. For instance, he attributes
the use of the cusp or 'redent' in its more complex forms, to the
necessity, or convenience, of diminishing the space of glass which the
tracery grasps; and he attributes the reductions of the mouldings in the
tracery bar under portions of one section, to the greater facility thus
obtained by the architect in directing his workmen. The plan of a window
once given, and the moulding-section,—all is said, thinks M. Violet
le Duc. Very convenient indeed, for modern architects who have commission
on the cost. But certainly not necessary, and perhaps even inconvenient,
to Niccola Pisano, who is himself his workman, and cuts his own traceries,
with his apron loaded with dust.
155. Again, the redent—the 'tooth within tooth' of a French
tracery—may be necessary, to bite its glass. But the cusp, cuspis,
spiny or spearlike point of a thirteenth century illumination, is not in
the least necessary to transfix the parchment. Yet do you suppose that the
structural convenience of the redent entirely effaces from the mind of the
designer the aesthetic characters which he seeks in the cusp? If you could
for an instant imagine this, you would be undeceived by a glance either at
the early redents of Amiens, fringing hollow vaults, or the late redents
of Rouen, acting as crockets on the outer edges of pediments. 156.
Again: if you think of the tracery in its bars, you call the cusp a
redent; but if you think of it in the openings, you call the
apertures of it foils. Do you suppose that the thirteenth century builder
thought only of the strength of the bars of his enclosure, and never of
the beauty of the form he enclosed? You will find in my chapter on the
Aperture, in the "Stones of Venice," full development of the aesthetic
laws relating to both these forms, while you may see, in Professor
Willis's 'Architecture of the Middle Ages,' a beautiful analysis of the
development of tracery from the juxtaposition of aperture; and in the
article 'Meneau,' just quoted of M. Violet le Duc, an equally beautiful
analysis of its development from the masonry of the chassis. You may at
first think that Professor Willis's analysis is inconsistent with M.
Violet le Duc's. But they are no more inconsistent than the accounts of
the growth of a human being would be, if given by two anatomists, of whom
one had examined only the skeleton and the other only the respiratory
system; and who, therefore, supposed—the first, that the animal had
been made only to leap, and the other only to sing. I don't mean that
either of the writers I name are absolutely thus narrow in their own
views, but that, so far as inconsistency appears to exist between them, it
is of that partial kind only.
157. And for the understanding of our Pisan traceries we must introduce a
third element of similarly distinctive nature. We must, to press our
simile a little farther, examine the growth of the animal as if it had
been made neither to leap, nor to sing, but only to think. We must observe
the transitional states of its nerve power; that is to say, in our window
tracery we must consider not merely how its ribs are built, (or how it
stands,) nor merely how its openings are shaped, or how it breathes; but
also what its openings are made to light, or its shafts to receive, of
picture or image. As the limbs of the building, it may be much; as the
lungs of the building, more. As the eyes {1} of the building, what?
{Footnote 1: I am ashamed to italicize so many words; but these passages,
written for oral delivery, can only be understood if read with oral
emphasis. This is the first aeries of lectures which I have printed as
they were to be spoken; and it is a great mistake.}
158. Thus you probably have a distinct idea—those of you at least
who are interested in architecture—of the shape of the windows in
Westminster Abbey, in the Cathedral of Chartres, or in the Duomo of Milan.
Can any of you, I should like to know, make a guess at the shape of the
windows in the Sistine Chapel, the Stanze of the Vatican, the Scuola di
San Rocco, or the lower church of Assisi? The soul or anima of the first
three buildings is in their windows; but of the last three, in their
walls.
All these points I may for the present leave you to think over for
yourselves, except one, to which I must ask yet for a few moments your
further attention.
159. The trefoils to which I have called your attention in Niccola's
pulpit are as absolutely without structural office in the circles as in
the panels of the font beside it. But the circles are drawn with evident
delight in the lovely circular line, while the trefoil is struck out by
Niccola so roughly that there is not a true compass curve or section in
any part of it.
Roughly, I say. Do you suppose I ought to have said carelessly? So far
from it, that if one sharper line or more geometric curve had been given,
it would have caught the eye too strongly, and drawn away the attention
from the sculpture. But imagine the feeling with which a French master
workman would first see these clumsy intersections of curves. It would be
exactly the sensation with which a practical botanical draughtsman would
look at a foliage background of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
But Sir Joshua's sketched leaves would indeed imply some unworkmanlike
haste. We must not yet assume the Pisan master to have allowed himself in
any such. His mouldings may be hastily cut, for they are, as I have just
said, unnecessary to his structure, and disadvantageous to his decoration;
but he is not likely to be careless about arrangements necessary for
strength. His mouldings may be cut hastily, but do you think his joints
will be?
160. What subject of extended inquiry have we in this word, ranging from
the cementless clefts between the couchant stones of the walls of the
kings of Rome, whose iron rivets you had but the other day placed in your
hands by their discoverer, through the grip of the stones of the Tower of
the Death-watch, to the subtle joints in the marble armour of the
Florentine Baptistery!
Our own work must certainly be left with a rough surface at this place,
and we will fit the edges of it to our next piece of study as closely as
we may.
LECTURE VII. MARBLE RAMPANT.
161. I closed my last lecture at the question respecting Nicholas's
masonry. His mouldings may be careless, but do you think his joints will
be?
I must remind you now of the expression as to the building of the communal
palace—"of dressed stones" {1}—as opposed to the Tower
of the Death-watch, in which the grip of cement had been so good.
Virtually, you will find that the schools of structural architecture are
those which use cement to bind
{Footnote 1: "Pietre conce." The portion of the has-reliefs of Orvieto,
given in the opposite plate, will show the importance of the jointing.
Observe the way in which the piece of stone with the three principal
figures is dovetailed above the extended band, and again in the rise above
the joint of the next stone on the right, the sculpture of the wings being
carried across the junction. I have chosen this piece on purpose, because
the loss of the broken fragment, probably broken by violence, and the only
serious injury which the sculptures have received, serves to show the
perfection of the uninjured surface, as compared with northern sculpture
of the same date. I have thought it well to show at the same time the
modern German engraving of the subject, respecting which see Appendix.}
{Illustration: PLATE VIII.—"THE CHARGE TO ADAM." GIOVANNI PISANO.}
their materials together, and in which, therefore, balance of weight
becomes a continual and inevitable question. But the schools of sculptural
architecture are those in which stones are fitted without cement, in
which, therefore, the question of fitting or adjustment is
continual and inevitable, but the sustainable weight practically
unlimited.
162. You may consider the Tower of the Death-watch as having been knit
together like the mass of a Roman brick wall.
But the dressed stone work of the thirteenth century is the hereditary
completion of such block-laying, as the Parthenon in marble; or, in tufo,
as that which was shown you so lately in the walls of Romulus; and the
decoration of that system of couchant stone is by the finished grace of
mosaic or sculpture.
163. It was also pointed out to you by Mr. Parker that there were two
forms of Cyclopean architecture; one of level blocks, the other of
polygonal,—contemporary, but in localities affording different
material of stone.
I have placed in this frame examples of the Cyclopean horizontal, and the
Cyclopean polygonal, architecture of the thirteenth century. And as Hubert
of Lucca was the master of the new buildings at Florence, I have chosen
the Cyclopean horizontal from his native city of Lucca; and as our
Nicholas and John brought their new Gothic style into practice at Orvieto,
I have chosen the Cyclopean polygonal from their adopted city of Orvieto.
Both these examples of architecture are early thirteenth century work, the
beginnings of its new and Christian style, but beginnings with which
Nicholas and John had nothing to do; they were part of the national work
going on round them.
164. And this example from Lucca is of a very important class indeed. It
is from above the east entrance gate of Lucca, which bears the cross above
it, as the doors of a Christian city should. Such a city is, or ought to
be, a place of peace, as much as any monastery.
This custom of placing the cross above the gate is Byzantine-Christian;
and here are parallel instances of its treatment from Assisi. The lamb
with the cross is given in the more elaborate arch of Verona.
165. But farther. The mosaic of this cross is so exquisitely fitted that
no injury has been received by it to this day from wind or weather. And
the horizontal dressed stones are laid so daintily that not an edge of
them has stirred; and, both to draw your attention to their beautiful
fitting, and as a substitute for cement, the architect cuts his uppermost
block so as to dovetail into the course below.
Dovetail, I say deliberately. This is stone carpentry, in which the
carpenter despises glue. I don't say he won't use glue, and glue of the
best, but he feels it to be a nasty thing, and that it spoils his wood or
marble. None, at least, he determines shall be seen outside, and his
laying of stones shall be so solid and so adjusted that, take all the
cement away, his wall shall yet stand.
Stonehenge, the Parthenon, the walls of the Kings, this gate of Lucca,
this window of Orvieto, and this tomb at Verona, are all built on the
Cyclopean principle. They will stand without cement, and no cement shall
be seen outside. Mr. Burgess and I actually tried the experiment on this
tomb. Mr. Burgess modelled every stone of it in clay, put them together,
and it stood.
166. Now there are two most notable characteristics about this Cyclopean
architecture to which I beg your close attention.
The first: that as the laying of stones is so beautiful, their joints
become a subject of admiration, and great part of the architectural
ornamentation is in the beauty of lines of separation, drawn as finely as
possible. Thus the separating lines of the bricks at Siena, of this gate
at Lucca, of the vault at Verona, of this window at Orvieto, and of the
contemporary refectory at Furness Abbey, are a main source of the pleasure
you have in the building. Nay, they are not merely engravers' lines, but,
in finest practice, they are mathematical lines—length without
breadth. Here in my hand is a little shaft of Florentine mosaic executed
at the present day. The separations between the stones are, in dimension,
mathematical lines. And the two sides of the thirteenth century porch of
St. Anastasia at Verona are built in this manner,—so exquisitely,
that for some time, my mind not having been set at it, I passed them by as
painted!
167. That is the first character of the Florentine Cyclopean But secondly;
as the joints are so firm, and as the building must never stir or settle
after it is built, the sculptor may trust his work to two stones set side
by side, or one above another, and carve continuously over the whole
surface, disregarding the joints, if he so chooses.
Of the degree of precision with which Nicholas of Pisa and his son
adjusted their stones, you may judge by this rough sketch of a piece of
St. Mary's of the Thorn, in which the design is of panels enclosing very
delicately sculptured heads; and one would naturally suppose that the
enclosing panels would be made of jointed pieces, and the heads carved
separately and inserted. But the Pisans would have considered that unsafe
masonry,—liable to the accident of the heads being dropped out, or
taken away. John of Pisa did indeed use such masonry, of necessity, in his
fountain; and the bas-reliefs have been taken away. But here one
great block of marble forms part of two panels, and the mouldings and head
are both carved in the solid, the joint running just behind the neck.
168. Such masonry is, indeed, supposing there were no fear of thieves,
gratuitously precise in a case of this kind, in which the ornamentation is
in separate masses, and might be separately carved. But when the
ornamentation is current, and flows or climbs along the stone in the
manner of waves or plants, the concealment of the joints of the pieces of
marble becomes altogether essential. And here we enter upon a most curious
group of associated characters in Gothic as opposed to Greek architecture.
169. If you have been able to read the article to which I referred you,
'Meneau,' in M. Violet le Duc's dictionary, you know that one great
condition of the perfect Gothic structure is that the stones shall be 'en
de-lit,' set up on end. The ornament then, which on the reposing or
couchant stone was current only, on the erected stone begins to climb
also, and becomes, in the most heraldic sense of the term, rampant.
In the heraldic sense, I say, as distinguished from the still wider
original sense of advancing with a stealthy, creeping, or clinging motion,
as a serpent on the ground, and a cat, or a vine, up a tree-stem. And
there is one of these reptile, creeping, or rampant things, which is the
first whose action was translated into marble, and otherwise is of
boundless importance in the arts and labours of man.
170. You recollect Kingsley's expression,—now hackneyed, because
admired for its precision,—the 'crawling foam,' of waves
advancing on sand. Tennyson has somewhere also used, with equal truth, the
epithet 'climbing' of the spray of breakers against vertical rock. {1} In
either instance, the sea action is literally 'rampant'; and the course of
a great breaker, whether in its first proud likeness to a rearing horse,
or in the humble and subdued gaining of the outmost verge of its foam on
the sand, or the intermediate spiral whorl which gathers into a lustrous
precision, like that of a polished shell, the grasping force of a giant,
you have the most vivid sight and embodiment of literally rampant energy;
which the Greeks expressed in their symbolic Poseidon, Scylla, and
sea-horse, by the head and crest of the man, dog, or horse, with the body
of the serpent; and of which you will find the slower image, in
vegetation, rendered both by the spiral tendrils of grasping or climbing
plants, and the perennial gaining of the foam or the lichen upon barren
shores of stone.
{Footnote: Perhaps I am thinking of Lowell, not Tennyson; I have not time
to look.}
171. If you will look to the thirtieth chapter of vol. i. in the new
edition of the "Stones of Venice," which, by the gift of its publishers, I
am enabled to lay on your table to be placed in your library, you will
find one of my first and most eager statements of the necessity of
inequality or change in form, made against the common misunderstanding of
Greek symmetry, and illustrated by a woodcut of the spiral ornament on the
treasury of Atreus at Mycenae. All that is said in that chapter respecting
nature and the ideal, I now beg most earnestly to recommend and ratify to
you; but although, even at that time, I knew more of Greek art than my
antagonists, my broken reading has given me no conception of the range of
its symbolic power, nor of the function of that more or less formal spiral
line, as expressive, not only of the waves of the sea, but of the zones of
the whirlpool, the return of the tempest, and the involution of the
labyrinth. And although my readers say that I wrote then better than I
write now, I cannot refer you to the passage without asking you to pardon
in it what I now hold to be the petulance and vulgarity of expression,
disgracing the importance of the truth it contains. A little while ago,
without displeasure, you permitted me to delay you by the account of a
dispute on a matter of taste between my father and me, in which he was
quietly and unavailingly right. It seems to me scarcely a day, since, with
boyish conceit, I resisted his wise entreaties that I would re-word this
clause; and especially take out of it the description of a sea-wave as
"laying a great white tablecloth of foam" all the way to the shore. Now,
after an interval of twenty years, I refer you to the passage, repentant
and humble as far as regards its style, which people sometimes praised,
but with absolue re-assertion of the truth and value of its contents,
which people always denied. As natural form is varied, so must beautiful
ornament be varied. You are not an artist by reproving nature into
deathful sameness, but by animating your copy of her into vital variation.
But I thought at that time that only Goths were rightly changeful. I never
thought Greeks were. Their reserved variation escaped me, or I thought it
accidental. Here, however, is a coin of the finest Greek workmanship,
which shows you their mind in this matter unmistakably. Here are the waves
of the Adriatic round a knight of Tarentum, and there is no doubt of their
variableness.
172. This pattern of sea-wave, or river whirlpool, entirely sacred in the
Greek mind, and the {Greek: *bostruchos*} or similarly curling wave in
flowing hair, are the two main sources of the spiral form in lambent or
rampant decoration. Of such lambent ornament, the most important piece is
the crocket, of which I rapidly set before you the origin.
173. Here is a drawing of the gable of the bishop's throne in the upper
church at Assisi, of the exact period when the mosaic workers of the
thirteenth century at Rome adopted rudely the masonry of the north.
Briefly, this is a Greek temple pediment, in which, doubtful of their
power to carve figures beautiful enough, they cut a trefoiled hold for
ornament, and bordered the edges with harlequinade of mosaic. They then
call to their help the Greek sea-waves, and let the surf of the Ægean
climb along the slopes, and toss itself at the top into a fleur-de-lys.
Every wave is varied in outline and proportionate distance, though cut
with a precision of curve like that of the sea itself. From this root we
are able—but it must be in a lecture on crockets only—to trace
the succeeding changes through the curl of Richard II.'s hair, and the
crisp leaves of the forests of Picardy, to the knobbed extravagances of
expiring Gothic. But I must to-day let you compare one piece of perfect
Gothic work with the perfect Greek.
174. There is no question in my own mind, and, I believe, none in that of
any other long-practised student of mediæval art, that in pure structural
Gothic the church of St. Urbain at Troyes is without rival in Europe. Here
is a rude sketch of its use of the crocket in the spandrils of its
external tracery, and here are the waves of the Greek sea round the son of
Poseidon. Seventeen hundred years are between them, but the same mind is
in both. I wonder how many times seventeen hundred years Mr. Darwin will
ask, to retrace the Greek designer of this into his primitive ape; or how
many times six hundred years of such improvements as we have made on the
church of St. Urbain, will be needed in order to enable our descendants to
regard the designers of that, as only primitive apes.
175. I return for a moment to my gable at Assisi. You see that the crest
of the waves at the top form a rude likeness of a fleur-de-lys. There is,
however, in this form no real intention of imitating a flower, any more
than in the meeting of the tails of these two Etruscan griffins. The
notable circumstance in this piece of Gothic is its advanced form of
crocket, and its prominent foliation, with nothing in the least
approaching to floral ornament.
176. And now, observe this very curious fact in the personal character of
two contemporary artists. See the use of my manually graspable flag. Here
is John of Pisa,—here Giotto. They are contemporary for twenty
years;—but these are the prime of Giotto's life, and the last of
John's life: virtually, Giotto is the later workman by full twenty years.
But Giotto always uses severe geometrical mouldings, and disdains all
luxuriance of leafage to set off interior sculpture.
John of Pisa not only adopts Gothic tracery, but first allows himself
enthusiastic use of rampant vegetation;—and here in the façade of
Orvieto, you have not only perfect Gothic in the sentiment of Scripture
history, but such luxurious ivy ornamentation as you cannot afterwards
match for two hundred years. Nay, you can scarcely match it then—for
grace of line, only in the richest flamboyant of France.
177. Now this fact would set you, if you looked at art from its aesthetic
side only, at once to find out what German artists had taught Giovanni
Pisano. There were Germans teaching him,—some teaching him
many things; and the intense conceit of the modern German artist imagines
them to have taught him all things.
But he learnt his luxuriance, and Giotto his severity, in another school.
The quality in both is Greek; and altogether moral. The grace and the
redundance of Giovanui are the first strong manifestation of those
characters in the Italian mind which culminate in the Madonnas of Luini
and the arabesques of Raphael. The severity of Giotto belongs to him, on
the contrary, not only as one of the strongest practical men who ever
lived on this solid earth, but as the purest and firmest reformer of the
discipline of the Christian Church, of whose writings any remains exist.
178. Of whose writings, I say; and you look up, as doubtful that he has
left any. Hieroglyphics, then, let me say instead; or, more accurately
still, hierographics. St. Francis, in what he wrote and said, taught much
that was false. But Giotto, his true disciple, nothing but what was true.
And where heuses an arabesque of foliage, depend upon it it will
be to purpose—not redundant. I return for the time to our soft and
luxuriant John of Pisa.
179. Soft, but with no unmanly softness; luxuriant, but with no unmannered
luxury. To him you owe as to their first sire in art, the grace of
Ghiberti, the tenderness of Raphael, the awe of Michael Angelo.
Second-rate qualities in all the three, but precious in their kind, and
learned, as you shall see, essentially from this man. Second-rate he also,
but with most notable gifts of this inferior kind. He is the Canova of the
thirteenth century; but the Canova of the thirteenth, remember, was
necessarily a very different person from the Canova of the eighteenth.
The Cauova of the eighteenth century mimicked Greek grace for the delight
of modern revolutionary sensualists. The Canova of the thirteenth century
brought living Gothic truth into the living faith of his own time.
Greek truth, and Gothic 'liberty,'—in that noble sense of the word,
derived from the Latin 'liber,' of which I have already spoken, and which
in my next lecture I will endeavour completely to develope. Meanwhile let
me show you, as far as I can, the architecture itself about which these
subtle questions arise.
180. Here are five frames, containing the best representations I can get
for you of the façade of the cathedral of Orvieto. I must remind you,
before I let you look at them, of the reason why that cathedral was built;
for I have at last got to the end of the parenthesis which began in my
second lecture, on the occasion of our hearing that John of Pisa was sent
for to Perugia, to carve the tomb of Pope Urban IV.; and we must now know
who this Pope was.
181. He was a Frenchman, born at that Troyes, in Champagne, which I gave
you as the centre of French architectural skill, and Royalist character.
He was born in the lowest class of the people, rose like Wolsey; became
Bishop of Verdun; then, Patriarch of Jerusalem; returned in the year 1261,
from his Patriarchate, to solicit the aid of the then Pope, Alexander IV.,
against the Saracen. I do not know on what day he arrived in Rome; but on
the 25th of May, Alexander died, and the Cardinals, after three months'
disputing, elected the suppliant Patriarch to be Pope himself.
182. A man with all the fire of France in him, all the faith, and all the
insolence; incapable of doubting a single article of his creed, or
relaxing one tittle of his authority; destitute alike of reason and of
pity; and absolutely merciless either to an infidel, or an enemy. The
young Prince Manfred, bastard son of Frederick II., now representing the
main power of the German empire, was both; and against him the Pope
brought into Italy a religious French knight, of character absolutely like
his own, Charles of Anjou.
183. The young Manfred, now about twenty years old, was as good a soldier
as he was a bad Christian; and there was no safety for Urban at Rome. The
Pope seated himself on a worthy throne for a thirteenth-century St. Peter.
Fancy the rock of Edinburgh Castle, as steep on all sides as it is to the
west; and as long as the Old Town; and you have the rock of Orvieto.
184. Here, enthroned against the gates of hell, in unassailable fortitude,
and unfaltering faith, sat Urban; the righteousness of his cause presently
to be avouched by miracle, notablest among those of the Roman Church.
Twelve miles east of his rock, beyond the range of low Apennine, shone the
quiet lake, the Loch Leven of Italy, from whose island the daughter of
Theodoric needed not to escape—Fate seeking her there; and in a
little chapel on its shore a Bohemian priest, infected with Northern
infidelity, was brought back to his allegiance by seeing the blood drop
from the wafer in his hand. And the Catholic Church recorded this heavenly
testimony to her chief mystery, in the Festa of the Corpus Domini, and the
Fabric of Orvieto.
185. And sending was made for John, and for all good labourers in marble;
but Urban never saw a stone of the great cathedral laid. His citation of
Manfred to appear in his presence to answer for his heresy, was fixed
against the posts of the doors of the old Duomo. But Urban had dug the
foundation of the pile to purpose, and when he died at Perugia, still
breathed, from his grave, calamity to Manfred, and made from it glory to
the Church. He had secured the election of a French successor; from the
rock of Orvieto the spirit of Urban led the French chivalry, when Charles
of Anjou saw the day of battle come, so long desired. Manfred's Saracens,
with their arrows, broke his first line; the Pope's legate blessed the
second, and gave them absolution of all their sins, for their service to
the Church. They charged for Orvieto with their old cry of 'Mont-Joie,
Chevaliers!' and before night, while Urban lay sleeping in his carved tomb
at Perugia, the body of Manfred lay only recognizable by those who loved
him, naked among the slain.
186. Time wore on and on. The Suabian power ceased in Italy; between white
and red there was now no more contest;—the matron of the Church,
scarlet-robed, reigned, ruthless, on her seven hills. Time wore on; and, a
hundred years later, now no more the power of the kings, but the power of
the people,—rose against her. St. Michael, from the corn market,—Or
San Michele,—the commercial strength of Florence, on a question of
free trade in corn. And note, for a little bye piece of botany, that in
Val d'Arno lilies grow among the corn instead of poppies. The purple
gladiolus glows through all its green fields in early spring.
187. A question of free trade in corn, then, arose between Florence and
Rome. The Pope's legate in Bologna stopped the supply of polenta, the
Florentines depending on that to eat with their own oil. Very wicked, you
think, of the Pope's legate, acting thus against quasi-Protestant
Florence? Yes; just as wicked as the—not quasi-Protestants—but
intensely positive Protestants, of Zurich, who tried to convert the
Catholic forest-cantons by refusing them salt. Christendom has been
greatly troubled about bread and salt: the then Protestant Pope,
Zuinglius, was killed at the battle of Keppel, and the Catholic cantons
therefore remain Catholic to this day; while the consequences of this
piece of protectionist economy at Bologna are equally interesting and
direct.
188. The legate of Bologna, not content with stopping the supplies of
maize to Florence, sent our own John Hawkwood, on the 24th June, 1375, to
burn all the maize the Florentines had got growing; and the abbot of
Montemaggiore sent a troop of Perugian religious gentlemen-riders to
ravage similarly the territory of Siena. Whereupon, at Florence, the
Gonfalonier of Justice, Aloesio Aldobrandini, rose in the Council of
Ancients and proposed, as an enterprise worthy of Florentine generosity,
the freedom of all the peoples who groaned under the tyranny of the
Church. And Florence, Siena, Pisa, Lucca, and Arezzo,—all the great
cities of Etruria, the root of religion in Italy,—joined against the
tyranny of religion. Strangely, this Etrurian league is not now to restore
Tarquin to Rome, but to drive the Roman Tarquin into exile. The story of
Lucretia had been repeated in Perugia; but the Umbrian Lucretia had died,
not by suicide, but by falling on the pavement from the window through
which she tried to escape. And the Umbrian Sextus was the Abbot of
Montemaggiore's nephew.
189. Florence raised her fleur-de-lys standard: and, in ten days, eighty
cities of Romagua were free, out of the number of whose names I will read
you only these—Urbino, Foligno, Spoleto, Narni, Camerino,
Toscanella, Perugia, Orvieto.
And while the wind and the rain still beat the body of Manfred, by the
shores of the Rio Verde, the body of Pope Urban was torn from its tomb,
and not one stone of the carved work thereof left upon another. 190. I
will only ask you to-day to notice farther that the Captain of Florence,
in this war, was a 'Conrad of Suabia,' and that she gave him, beside her
own flag, one with only the word 'Libertas' inscribed on it.
I told you that the first stroke of the bell on the Tower of the Lion
began the carillon for European civil and religious liberty. But perhaps,
even in the fourteenth century, Florence did not understand, by that word,
altogether the same policy which is now preached in France, Italy, and
England.
What she did understand by it, we will try to ascertain in the course of
next lecture.
LECTURE VIII. FRANCHISE.
191. In my first lecture of this course, you remember that I showed
you the Lion of St. Mark's with Niccola Pisano's, calling the one
an evangelical-preacher lion, and the other a real, and naturally
affectionate, lioness.
And the one I showed you as Byzantine, the other as Gothic.
So that I thus called the Greek art pious, and the Gothic profane.
Whereas in nearly all our ordinary modes of thought, and in all my own
general references to either art, we assume Greek or classic work to be
profane, and Gothic, pious, or religious.
192. Very short reflection, if steady and clear, will both show you how
confused our ideas are usually on this subject, and how definite they may
within certain limits become.
First of all, don't confuse piety with Christianity. There are pious
Greeks and impious Greeks; pious Turks and impious Turks; pious Christians
and impious Christians; pious modern infidels and impious modern infidels.
In case you do not quite know what piety really means, we will try to know
better in next lecture; for the present, understand that I mean distinctly
to call Greek art, in the true sense of the word, pious, and Gothic, as
opposed to it, profane.
193. But when I oppose these two words, Gothic and Greek, don't run away
with the notion that I necessarily mean to oppose Christian and
Greek. You must not confuse Gothic blood in a man's veins, with Christian
feeling in a man's breast. There are unconverted and converted Goths;
unconverted and converted Greeks. The Greek and Gothic temper is equally
opposed, where the name of Christ has never been uttered by either, or
when every other name is equally detested by both.
I want you to-day to examine with me that essential difference between
Greek and Gothic temper, irrespective of creed, to which I have referred
in my preface to the last edition of the "Stones of Venice," saying that
the Byzantines gave law to Norman license. And I must therefore ask your
patience while I clear your minds from some too prevalent errors as to the
meaning of those two words, law and license.
194. There is perhaps no more curious proof of the disorder which
impatient and impertinent science is introducing into classical thought
and language, than the title chosen by the Duke of Argyll for his
interesting study of Natural History—'The Reign of Law.' Law cannot
reign. If a natural law, it admits no disobedience, and has nothing to put
right. If a human one, it can compel no obedience, and has no power to
prevent wrong. A king only can reign;—a person, that is to say, who,
conscious of natural law, enforces human law so far as it is just.
195. Kinghood is equally necessary in Greek dynasty, and in Gothic.
Theseus is every inch a king, as well as Edward III. But the laws which
they have to enforce on their own and their companions' humanity are
opposed to each other as much as their dispositions are.
The function of a Greek king was to enforce labour.
That of a Gothic king, to restrain rage.
The laws of Greece determine the wise methods of labour; and the laws of
France determine the wise restraints of passion.
For the sins of Greece are in Indolence, and its pleasures; and the sins
of France are in fury, and its pleasures.
196. You are now again surprised, probably, at hearing me oppose France
typically to Greece. More strictly, I might oppose only a part of France,—Normandy.
But it is better to say, France, {1} as embracing the seat of the
established Norman power in the Island of our Lady; and the province in
which it was crowned,—Champagne.
{Footnote 1: "Normandie, la franche." "France, la solue;" (chanson de
Roland). One of my good pupils referred me to this ancient and glorious
French song.}
France is everlastingly, by birth, name, and nature, the country of the
Franks, or free persons; and the first source of European frankness, or
franchise. The Latin for franchise is libertas. But the modern or
Cockney-English word liberty,—Mr. John Stuart Mill's,—is not
the equivalent of libertas; and the modern or Cockney-French word liberté,—M.
Victor Hugo's,—is not the equivalent of franchise.
197. The Latin for franchise, I have said, is libertas; the Greek is
{Greek: *eleupheria*}. In the thoughts of all three nations, the idea is
precisely the same, and the word used for the idea by each nation
therefore accurately translates the word of the other: {Greek:
*eleupheria*}—libertas—franchise—reciprocally translate
each other. Leonidas is characteristically {Greek: *eleupheros*} among
Greeks; Publicola, characteristically liber, among Romans; Edward III. and
the Black Prince, characteristically frank among French. And that common
idea, which the words express, as all the careful scholars among you will
know, is, with all the three nations, mainly of deliverance from the
slavery of passion. To be {Greek: *eleupheros*}, liber, or franc, is first
to have learned how to rule our own passions; and then, certain that our
own conduct is right, to persist in that conduct against all resistance,
whether of counter-opinion, counter pain, or counter-pleasure. To be
defiant alike of the mob's thought, of the adversary's threat, and the
harlot's temptation,—this is in the meaning of every great nation to
be free; and the one condition upon which that freedom can be obtained is
pronounced to you in a single verse of the 119th Psalm, "I will walk at
liberty, for I seek Thy precepts."
198. Thy precepts:—Law, observe, being dominant over the Gothic as
over the Greek king, but a quite different law. Edward III. feeling no
anger against the Sieur de Ribaumont, and crowning him with his own pearl
chaplet, is obeying the law of love, restraining anger; but
Theseus, slaying the Minotaur, is obeying the law of justice, and enforcing
anger.
The one is acting under the law of the charity, {Greek: *charis*} or grace
of God; the other under the law of His judgment. The two together fulfil
His {Greek: *krisis*} and {Greek: *agapae*}.
199. Therefore the Greek dynasties are finally expressed in the kinghoods
of Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus, who judge infallibly, and divide
arithmetically. But the dynasty of the Gothic king is in equity and
compassion, and his arithmetic is in largesse,
"Whose moste joy was, I wis,
When that she gave, and said, Have this."
So that, to put it in shortest terms of all, Greek law is of Stasy, and
Gothic of Ecstasy; there is no limit to the freedom of the Gothic hand or
heart, and the children are most in the delight and the glory of liberty
when they most seek their Father's precepts.
200. The two lines I have just quoted are, as you probably remember, from
Chaucer's translation of the French Romance of the Rose, out of which I
before quoted to you the description of the virtue of Debonnaireté. Now
that Debonnaireté of the Painted Chamber of Westminster is the typical
figure used by the French sculptors and painters for 'franchise,'
frankness, or Frenchness; but in the Painted Chamber, Debonnaireté, high
breeding, 'out of goodnestedness,' or gentleness, is used, as an English
king's English, of the Norman franchise. Here, then, is our own royalty,—let
us call it Englishness, the grace of our proper kinghood;—and here
is French royalty, the grace of French kinghood—Frenchness, rudely
but sufficiently drawn by M. Didron from the porch of Chartres. She has
the crown of fleur-de-lys, and William the Norman's shield.
201. Now this grace of high birth, the grace of his or her Most Gracious
Majesty, has her name at Chartres written beside her, in Latin. Had it
been in Greek, it would have been {Greek: *elevtheria*}. Being in Latin,
what do you think it must be necessarily?—Of course, Libertas. Now
M. Didron is quite the best writer on art that I know,—full of sense
and intelligence; but of course, as a modern Frenchman,—one of a
nation for whom the Latin and Gothic ideas of libertas have entirely
vanished,—he is not on his guard against the trap here laid for him.
He looks at the word libertas through his spectacles;—can't
understand, being a thoroughly good antiquary, {1} how such a virtue, or
privilege, could honestly be carved with approval in the twelfth century;—rubs
his spectacles; rubs the inscription, to make sure of its every letter;
stamps it, to make surer still;—and at last, though in a greatly
bewildered state of mind, remains convinced that here is a sculpture of
'La Liberte' in the twelfth century. "C'est bien la liberte!" "On lit
parfaitement libertas."
{Footnote 1: Historical antiquary; not art-antiquary I must limitedly say,
however. He has made a grotesque mess of his account of the Ducal Palace
of Venice, through his ignorance of the technical characters of
sculpture.}
202. Not so, my good M. Didron!—a very different personage, this; of
whom more, presently, though the letters of her name are indeed so
plainly, 'Libertas, at non liberalitas,' liberalitas being the Latin for
largesse, not for franchise.
This, then, is the opposition between the Greek and Gothic dynasties, in
their passionate or vital nature; in the animal and inbred
part of them;—Classic and romantic, Static and exstatic. But now,
what opposition is there between their divine natures? Between Theseus and
Edward III., as warriors, we now know the difference; but between Theseus
and Edward III, as theologians; as dreaming and discerning creatures, as
didactic kings,—engraving letters with the point of the sword,
instead of thrusting men through with it,—changing the club into the
ferula, and becoming schoolmasters as well as kings; what is, thus, the
difference between them?
Theologians I called them. Philologians would be a better word,—lovers
of the {Greek: *Logos*}, or Word, by which the heavens and earth were
made. What logos, about this Logos, have they learned, or can they
teach?
203. I showed you, in my first lecture, the Byzantine Greek lion, as
descended by true unblemished line from the Nemean Greek; but with this
difference: Heracles kills the beast, and makes a helmet and cloak of his
skin; the Greek St. Mark converts the beast, and makes an evangelist of
him.
Is not that a greater difference, think you, than one of mere decadence?
This 'maniera goffa e sproporzionata' of Vasari is not, then, merely the
wasting away of former leonine strength into thin rigidities of death?
There is another change going on at the same time,—body perhaps
subjecting itself to spirit.
I will not teaze you with farther questions. The facts are simple enough.
Theseus and Heracles have their religion, sincere and sufficient,—a
religion of lion-killers, minotaur-killers, very curious and rude;
Eleusinian mystery mingled in it, inscrutable to us now,—partly
always so, even to them.
204. Well; the Greek nation, in process of time, loses its manliness,—becomes
Graeculus instead of Greek. But though effeminate and feeble, it inherits
all the subtlety of its art, all the cunning of its mystery; and it is
converted to a more spiritual religion. Nor is it altogether degraded,
even by the diminution of its animal energy. Certain spiritual phenomena
are possible to the weak, which are hidden from the strong;—nay, the
monk may, in his order of being, possess strength denied to the warrior.
Is it altogether, think you, by blundering, or by disproportion in
intellect or in body, that Theseus becomes St. Athanase? For that is the
kind of change which takes place, from the days of the great King of
Athens, to those of the great Bishop of Alexandria, in the thought and
theology, or, summarily, in the spirit of the Greek.
Now we have learned indeed the difference between the Gothic knight and
the Greek knight; but what will be the difference between the Gothic saint
and Greek saint?
Franchise of body against constancy of body.
Franchise of thought, then, against constancy of thought.
Edward III. against Theseus.
And the Frank of Assisi against St. Athanase.
205. Utter franchise, utter gentleness in theological thought. Instead of,
'This is the faith, which except a man believe faithfully, he cannot be
saved,' 'This is the love, which if a bird or an insect keep faithfully,
itshall be saved.'
Gentlemen, you have at present arrived at a phase of natural science in
which, rejecting alike the theology of the Byzantine, and the affection of
the Frank, you can only contemplate a bird as flying under the reign of
law, and a cricket as singing under the compulsion of caloric.
I do not know whether you yet feel that the position of your boat on the
river also depends entirely on the reign of law, or whether, as your
churches and concert-rooms are privileged in the possession of organs
blown by steam, you are learning yourselves to sing by gas, and expect the
Dies Irae to the announced by a steam-trumpet. But I can very positively
assure you that, in my poor domain of imitative art, not all the
mechanical or gaseous forces of the world, nor all the laws of the
universe, will enable you either to see a colour, or draw a line, without
that singular force anciently called the soul, which it was the function
of the Greek to discipline in the duty of the servants of God, and of the
Goth to lead into the liberty of His children.
206. But in one respect I wish you were more conscious of the existence of
law than you appear to be. The difference which I have pointed out to you
as existing between these great nations, exists also between two orders of
intelligence among men, of which the one is usually called Classic, the
other Romantic. Without entering into any of the fine distinctions between
these two sects, this broad one is to be observed as constant: that the
writers and painters of the Classic school set down nothing but what is
known to be true, and set it down in the perfectest manner possible in
their way, and are thenceforward authorities from whom there is no appeal.
Romantic writers and painters, on the contrary, express themselves under
the impulse of passions which may indeed lead them to the discovery of new
truths, or to the more delightful arrangement or presentment of things
already known: but their work, however brilliant or lovely, remains
imperfect, and without authority. It is not possible, of course, to
separate these two orders of men trenchantly: a classic writer may
sometimes, whatever his care, admit an error, and a romantic one may reach
perfection through enthusiasm. But, practically, you may separate the two
for your study and your education; and, during your youth, the business of
us your masters is to enforce on you the reading, for school work, only of
classical books: and to see that your minds are both informed of the
indisputable facts they contain, and accustomed to act with the infallible
accuracy of which they set the example.
207. I have not time to make the calculation, but I suppose that the daily
literature by which we now are principally nourished, is so large in issue
that though St. John's﹃even the world itself could not contain the books
which should be written﹄may be still hyperbole, it is nevertheless
literally true that the world might be wrapped in the books which
are written; and that the sheets of paper covered with type on any given
subject, interesting to the modern mind, (say the prospects of the
Claimant,) issued in the form of English morning papers during a single
year, would be enough literally to pack the world in.
208. Now I will read you fifty-two lines of a classical author, which,
once well read and understood, contain more truth than has been told you
all this year by this whole globe's compass of print.
Fifty-two lines, of which you will recognize some as hackneyed, and see
little to admire in others. But it is not possible to put the statements
they contain into better English, nor to invalidate one syllable of the
statements they contain. {1}
{Footnote 1: 'The Deserted Village,' line 251 to 302.}
209. Even those, and there may be many here, who would dispute the truth
of the passage, will admit its exquisite distinctness and construction. If
it be untrue, that is merely because I have not been taught by my modern
education to recognize a classical author; but whatever my mistakes, or
yours, may be, there are certain truths long known to all rational
men, and indisputable. You may add to them, but you cannot diminish them.
And it is the business of a University to determine what books of this
kind exist, and to enforce the understanding of them.
210. The classical and romantic arts which we have now under examination
therefore consist,—the first, in that which represented, under
whatever symbols, truths respecting the history of men, which it is proper
that all should know; while the second owes its interest to passionate
impulse or incident. This distinction holds in all ages, but the
distinction between the franchise of Northern, and the constancy of
Byzantine, art, depends partly on the unsystematic play of emotion in the
one, and the appointed sequence of known fact or determined judgment in
the other.
You will find in the beginning of M. Didron's book, already quoted, an
admirable analysis of what may be called the classic sequence of Christian
theology, as written in the sculpture of the Cathedral of Chartres. You
will find in the treatment of the façade of Orvieto the beginning of the
development of passionate romance,—the one being grave sermon
writing; the other, cheerful romance or novel writing: so that the one
requires you to think, the other only to feel or perceive; the one is
always a parable with a meaning, the other only a story with an
impression.
211. And here I get at a result concerning Greek art, which is very
sweeping and wide indeed. That it is all parable, but Gothic, as distinct
from it, literal. So absolutely does this hold, that it reaches down to
our modern school of landscape. You know I have always told you Turner
belonged to the Greek school. Precisely as the stream of blood coming from
under the throne of judgment in the Byzantine mosaic of Torcello is a sign
of condemnation, his scarlet clouds are used by Turner as a sign of death;
and just as on an Egyptian tomb the genius of death lays the sun down
behind the horizon, so in his Cephalus and Procris, the last rays of the
sun withdraw from the forest as the nymph expires.
And yet, observe, both the classic and romantic teaching may be equally
earnest, only different in manner. But from classic art, unless you
understand it, you may get nothing; from romantic art, even if you don't
understand it, you get at least delight.
212. I cannot show the difference more completely or fortunately than by
comparing Sir Walter Scott's type of libertas, with the franchise of
Chartres Cathedral, or Debonnaireté of the Painted Chamber.
At Chartres, and Westminster, the high birth is shown by the crown; the
strong bright life by the flowing hair; the fortitude by the conqueror's
shield; and the truth by the bright openness of the face:
"She was not brown, nor dull of hue,
But white as snowe, fallen newe."
All these are symbols, which, if you cannot read, the image is to you only
an uninteresting stiff figure. But Sir Walter's Franchise, Diana Vernon,
interests you at once in personal aspect and character. She is no symbol
to you; but if you acquaint yourself with her perfectly, you find her
utter frankness, governed by a superb self-command; her spotless truth,
refined by tenderness; her fiery enthusiasm, subdued by dignity; and her
fearless liberty, incapable of doing wrong, joining to fulfil to you, in
sight and presence, what the Greek could only teach by signs.
213. I have before noticed—though I am not sure that you have yet
believed my statement of it—the significance of Sir Walter's as of
Shakspeare's names; Diana 'Vernon, semper viret,' gives you the conditions
of purity and youthful strength or spring which imply the highest state of
libertas. By corruption of the idea of purity, you get the modern heroines
of London Journal—or perhaps we may more fitly call it 'Cockney-daily'—literature.
You have one of them in perfection, for instance, in Mr. Charles Reade's
'Griffith Gaunt'—"Lithe, and vigorous, and one with her great white
gelding;" and liable to be entirely changed in her mind about the
destinies of her life by a quarter of an hour's conversation with a
gentleman unexpectedly handsome; the hero also being a person who looks at
people whom he dislikes, with eyes "like a dog's in the dark;" and both
hero and heroine having souls and intellects also precisely corresponding
to those of a dog's in the dark, which is indeed the essential picture of
the practical English national mind at this moment,—happy if it
remains doggish,—Circe not usually being content with changing
people into dogs only. For the Diana Vernon of the Greek is Artemis
Laphria, who is friendly to the dog; not to the swine. Do you see, by the
way, how perfectly the image is carried out by Sir Walter in putting his
Diana on the border country? "Yonder blue hill is in Scotland," she says
to her cousin,—not in the least thinking less of him for having been
concerned, it may be, in one of Bob Roy's forays. And so gradually you get
the idea of Norman franchise carried out in the free-rider or free-booter;
not safe from degradation on that side also; but by no means of swinish
temper, or foraging, as at present the British speculative public, only
with the snout.
214. Finally, in the most soft and domestic form of virtue, you have
Wordsworth's ideal:
"Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin liberty."
The distinction between these northern types of feminine virtue, and the
figures of Alcestis, Antigone, or Iphigenia, lies deep in the spirit of
the art of either country, and is carried out into its most unimportant
details. We shall find in the central art of Florence at once the
thoughtfulness of Greece and the gladness of England, associated under
images of monastic severity peculiar to herself.
And what Diana Vernon is to a French ballerine dancing the Cancan, the
'libertas' of Chartres and Westminster is to the 'liberty' of M. Victor
Hugo and Mr. John Stuart Mill.
LECTURE IX. THE TYRRHENE SEA.
215. We may now return to the points of necessary history, having our
ideas fixed within accurate limits as to the meaning of the word Liberty;
and as to the relation of the passions which separated the Guelph and
Ghibelline to those of our own days.
The Lombard or Guelph league consisted, after the accession of Florence,
essentially of the three great cities—Milan, Bologna, and Florence;
the Imperial or Ghibelline league, of Verona, Pisa, and Siena. Venice and
Genoa, both nominally Guelph, are in furious contention always for sea
empire while Pisa and Genoa are in contention, not so much for empire, as
honour. Whether the trade of the East was to go up the Adriatic, or round
by the Gulf of Genoa, was essentially a mercantile question; but whether,
of the two ports in sight of each other, Pisa or Genoa was to be the Queen
of the Tyrrhene Sea, was no less distinctly a personal one than which of
two rival beauties shall preside at a tournament.
216. This personal rivalry, so far as it was separated from their
commercial interests, was indeed mortal, but not malignant. The quarrel
was to be decided to the death, but decided with honour; and each city had
four observers permittedly resident in the other, to give account of all
that was done there in naval invention and armament.
217. Observe, also, in the year 1251, when we quitted our history, we left
Florence not only Guelph, as against the Imperial power, (that is to say,
the body of her knights who favoured the Pope and Italians, in dominion
over those who favoured Manfred and the Germans), but we left her also
definitely with her apron thrown over her shield; and the tradesmen and
craftsmen in authority over the knight, whether German or Italian, Papal
or Imperial.
That is in 1251. Now in these last two lectures I must try to mark the
gist of the history of the next thirty years. The Thirty Years' War, this,
of the middle ages, infinitely important to all ages; first observe,
between Guelph and Ghibelline, ending in the humiliation of the
Ghibelline; and, secondly, between Shield and Apron, or, if you like
better, between Spear and Hammer, ending in the breaking of the Spear.
218. The first decision of battle, I say, is that between Guelph and
Ghibelline, headed by two men of precisely oppposite characters, Charles
of Anjou and Manfred of Suabia. That I may be able to define the
opposition of their characters intelligibly, I must first ask your
attention to some points of general scholarship. I said in my last lecture
that, in this one, it would be needful for us to consider what piety was,
if we happened not to know; or worse than that, it may be, not
instinctively to feel. Such want of feeling is indeed not likely in you,
being English-bred; yet as it is the modern cant to consider all such
sentiment as useless, or even shameful, we shall be in several ways
advantaged by some examination of its nature. Of all classical writers,
Horace is the one with whom English gentlemen have on the average most
sympathy; and I believe, therefore, we shall most simply and easily get at
our point by examining the piety of Horace.
219. You are perhaps, for the moment, surprised, whatever might have been
admitted of Æneas, to hear Horace spoken of as a pious person. But of
course when your attention is turned to the matter you will recollect many
lines in which the word 'pietas' occurs, of which you have only hitherto
failed to allow the force because you supposed Horace did not mean what he
said.
220. But Horace always and altogether means what he says. It is just
because—whatever his faults may have been—he was not a
hypocrite, that English gentlemen are so fond of him.﹃Here is a frank
fellow, anyhow,﹄they say, "and a witty one." Wise men know that he is
also wise. True men know that he is also true. But pious men, for want of
attention, do not always know that he is pious.
One great obstacle to your understanding of him is your having been forced
to construct Latin verses, with introduction of the word 'Jupiter' always,
at need, when you were at a loss for a dactyl. You always feel as if
Horace only used it also when he wanted a dactyl.
221. Get quit of that notion wholly. All immortal writers speak out of
their hearts. Horace spoke out of the abundance of his heart, and tells
you precisely what he is, as frankly as Montaigne. Note then, first, how
modest he is:﹃Ne parva Tyrrhenum per aequor, vela darem;—Operosa
parvus, carmina fingo.﹄Trust him in such words; he absolutely means them;
knows thoroughly that he cannot sail the Tyrrhene Sea,—knows that he
cannot float on the winds of Matinum,—can only murmur in the sunny
hollows of it among the heath.
But note, secondly, his pride: "Exegi monumentum sere perennius." He is
not the least afraid to say that. He did it; knew he had done it; said he
had done it; and feared no charge of arrogance.
222. Note thirdly, then, his piety, and accept his assured speech of it:
"Dis pietas mea, et Musa, cordi est." He is perfectly certain of that
also; serenely tells you so; and you had better believe him. Well for you,
if you can believe him; for to believe him, you must understand him first;
and I can tell you, you won't arrive at that understanding by looking out
the word 'pietas' in your White-and-Riddle. If you do you will find those
tiresome contractions, Etym. Dub., stop your inquiry very briefly, as you
go back; if you go forward, through the Italian pieta, you will arrive
presently in another group of ideas, and end in misericordia, mercy, and
pity. You must not depend on the form of the word; you must find out what
it stands for in Horace's mind, and in Virgil's. More than race to the
Roman; more than power to the statesman; yet helpless beside the grave,—"Non,
Torquate, genus, non te facundia, non te, Restitvet pietas."
Nay, also what it stands for as an attribute, not only of men, but of
gods; nor of those only as merciful, but also as avenging. Against Æneas
himself, Dido invokes the waves of the Tyrrhene Sea,﹃si quid pia numina
possunt.﹄Be assured there is no getting at the matter by dictionary or
context. To know what love means, you must love; to know what piety means,
you must be pious.
223. Perhaps you dislike the word, now, from its vulgar use. You may have
another if you choose, a metaphorical one,—close enough it seems to
Christianity, and yet still absolutely distinct from it,—{Greek:
*christos*}. Suppose, as you watch the white bloom of the olives of Val
d'Arno and Val di Nievole, which modern piety and economy suppose were
grown by God only to supply you with fine Lucca oil, you were to consider,
instead, what answer you could make to the Socratio question, {Greek:
*pothen un tis tovto to chrisma labot*}. {1}
{Footnote 1: Xem. Conviv., ii.}
224. I spoke to you first of Horace's modesty. All piety begins in
modesty. You must feel that you are a very little creature, and that you
had better do as you are bid. You will then begin to think what you are
bid to do, and who bids it. And you will find, unless you are very unhappy
indeed, that there is always a quite clear notion of right and wrong in
your minds, which you can either obey or disobey, at your pleasure. Obey
it simply and resolutely; it will become clearer to you every day: and in
obedience to it, you will find a sense of being in harmony with nature,
and at peace with God, and all His creatures. You will not understand how
the peace comes, nor even in what it consists. It is the peace that passes
understanding;—it is just as visionary and imaginative as love is,
and just as real, and just as necessary to the life of man. It is the only
source of true cheerfulness, and of true common sense; and whether you
believe the Bible, or don't,—or believe the Koran, or don't—or
believe the Vedas, or don't—it will enable you to believe in God,
and please Him, and be such a part of the {Greek: *eudokia*} of the
universe as your nature fits you to be, in His sight, faithful in awe to
the powers that are above you, and gracious in regard to the creatures
that are around.
225. I will take leave on this head to read one more piece of Carlyle,
bearing much on present matters. "I hope also they will attack earnestly,
and at length extinguish and eradicate, this idle habit of 'accounting for
the moral sense,' as they phrase it. A most singular problem;—instead
of bending every thought to have more, and ever more, of 'moral sense,'
and therewith to irradiate your own poor soul, and all its work, into
something of divineness, as the one thing needful to you in this world! A
very futile problem that other, my friends; futile, idle, and far worse;
leading to what moral ruin, you little dream of! The moral sense, thank
God, is a thing you never will 'account for;' that, if you could think of
it, is the perennial miracle of man; in all times, visibly connecting poor
transitory man, here on this bewildered earth, with his Maker who is
eternal in the heavens. By no greatest happiness principle, greatest
nobleness principle, or any principle whatever, will you make that in the
least clearer than it already is;—forbear, I say, or you may darken
it away from you altogether! 'Two things,' says the memorable Kant,
deepest and most logical of metaphysical thinkers, 'two things strike me
dumb: the infinite starry heavens; and the sense of right and wrong in
man.' Visible infinites, both; say nothing of them; don't try to 'account
for them;' for you can say nothing wise."
226. Very briefly, I must touch one or two further relative conditions in
this natural history of the soul. I have asked you to take the
metaphorical, but distinct, word '{Greek: *chrisma*}' rather than the
direct but obscure one 'piety'; mainly because the Master of your religion
chose the metaphorical epithet for the perpetual one of His own life and
person.
But if you will spend a thoughtful hour or two in reading the scripture,
which pious Greeks read, not indeed on daintily printed paper, but on
daintily painted clay,—if you will examine, that is to say, the
scriptures of the Athenian religion, on their Pan-Athenaic vases, in their
faithful days, you will find that the gift of the literal {Greek:
*chrisma*}, or anointing oil, to the victor in the kingly and visible
contest of life, is signed always with the image of that spirit or goddess
of the air who was the source of their invisible life. And let me, before
quitting this part of my subject, give you one piece of what you will find
useful counsel. If ever from the right apothecary, or {Greek:
muropolaes}', you get any of that {Greek: *chrisma*},—don't be
careful, when you set it by, of looking for dead dragons or dead dogs in
it. But look out for the dead flies.
227. Again; remember, I only quote St. Paul as I quote Xenophon to you;
but I expect you to get some good from both. As I want you to think what
Xenophon means by '{Greek: *manteia*},' so I want you to consider also
what St. Paul means by '{Greek: *prophetia*}.' He tells you to prove all
things,—to hold fast what is good, and not to despise
'prophesyings.'
228. Now it is quite literally probable, that this world, having now for
some five hundred years absolutely refused to do as it is plainly bid by
every prophet that ever spoke in any nation, and having reduced itself
therefore to Saul's condition, when he was answered neither by Urim nor by
prophets, may be now, while you sit there, receiving necromantic answers
from the witch of Endor. But with that possibility you have no concern.
There is a prophetic power in your own hearts, known to the Greeks, known
to the Jews, known to the Apostles, and knowable by you. If it is now
silent to you, do not despise it by tranquillity under that privation; if
it speaks to you, do not despise it by disobedience.
229. Now in this broad definition of Pietas, as reverence to sentimental
law, you will find I am supported by all classical authority and use of
this word. For the particular meaning of which I am next about to use the
word Religion, there is no such general authority, nor can there be, for
any limited or accurate meaning of it. The best authors use the word in
various senses; and you must interpret each writer by his own context. I
have myself continually used the term vaguely. I shall endeavour,
henceforward, to use it under limitations which, willing always to accept,
I shall only transgress by carelessness, or compliance with some
particular use of the word by others. The power in the word, then, which I
wish you now to notice, is in its employment with respect to doctrinal
divisions. You do not say that one man is of one piety, and another of
another; but you do, that one man is of one religion, and another of
another.
230. The religion of any man is thus properly to be interpreted, as the
feeling which binds him, irrationally, to the fulfilment of duties, or
acceptance of beliefs, peculiar to a certain company of which he forms a
member, as distinct from the rest of the world. 'Which binds him irrationally,'
I say;—by a feeling, at all events, apart from reason, and often
superior to it; such as that which brings back the bee to its hive, and
the bird to her nest.
A man's religion is the form of mental rest, or dwelling-place, which,
partly, his fathers have gained or built for him, and partly, by due
reverence to former custom, he has built for himself; consisting of
whatever imperfect knowledge may have been granted, up to that time, in
the land of his birth, of the Divine character, presence, and dealings;
modified by the circumstances of surrounding life.
It may be, that sudden accession of new knowledge may compel him to cast
his former idols to the moles and to the bats. But it must be some very
miraculous interposition indeed which can justify him in quitting the
religion of his forefathers; and, assuredly, it must be an unwise
interposition which provokes him to insult it.
231. On the other hand, the value of religious ceremonial, and the virtue
of religious truth, consist in the meek fulfilment of the one as the fond
habit of a family; and the meek acceptance of the other, as the narrow
knowledge of a child. And both are destroyed at once, and the ceremonial
or doctrinal prejudice becomes only an occasion of sin, if they make us
either wise in our own conceit, or violent in our methods of proselytism.
Of those who will compass sea and land to make one proselyte, it is too
generally true that they are themselves the children of hell, and make
their proselytes twofold more so.
232. And now I am able to state to you, in terms so accurately defined
that you cannot misunderstand them, that we are about to study the results
in Italy of the victory of an impious Christian over a pious Infidel, in a
contest which, if indeed principalities of evil spirit are ever permitted
to rule over the darkness of this world, was assuredly by them wholly
provoked, and by them finally decided. The war was not actually ended
until the battle of Tagliacozzo, fought in August, 1268; but you need not
recollect that irregular date, or remember it only as three years after
the great battle of Welcome, Benevento; which was the decisive one.
Recollect, therefore, securely:
1250. The First Trades Revolt in Florence.
1260. Battle of the Arbia.
1265. Battle of Welcome.
Then between the battle of Welcome and of Tagliacozzo, (which you might
almost English in the real meaning of it as the battle of Hart's Death:
'cozzo' is a butt or thrust with the horn, and you may well think of the
young Conradin as a wild hart or stag of the hills)—between those
two battles, in 1266, comes the second and central revolt of the trades in
Florence, of which I have to speak in next lecture.
233. The two German princes who perished in these two battles—Manfred
of Tarentum, and his nephew and ward Conradin—are the natural son,
and the legitimate grandson of Frederick II.: they are also the last
assertors of the infidel German power in south Italy against the Church;
and in alliance with the Saracens; such alliance having been maintained
faithfully ever since Frederick II.'s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and
cornation as its king. Not only a great number of Manfred's forts were
commanded by Saracen governors, but he had them also appointed over civil
tribunals. My own impression is that he found the Saracens more just and
trustworthy than the Christians; but it is proper to remember the
allegations of the Church against the whole Suabian family; namely, that
Manfred had smothered his father Frederick under cushions at Ferentino;
and that, of Frederick's sons, Conrad had poisoned Henry, and Manfred had
poisoned Conrad. You will, however, I believe, find the Prince Manfred one
of the purest representatives of northern chivalry. Against his nephew,
educated in all knightly accomplishment by his mother, Elizabeth of
Bavaria, nothing could be alleged by his enemies, even when resolved on
his death, but the splendour of his spirit and the brightness of his
youth.
234. Of the character of their enemy, Charles of Anjou, there will remain
on your minds, after careful examination of his conduct, only the doubt
whether I am justified in speaking of him as Christian against Infidel.
But you will cease to doubt this when you have entirely entered into the
conditions of this nascent Christianity of the thirteenth century. You
will find that while men who desire to be virtuous receive it as the
mother of virtues, men who desire to be criminal receive it as the
forgiver of crimes; and that therefore, between Ghibelline or Infidel
cruelty, and Guelph or Christian cruelty, there is always this difference,—that
the Infidel cruelty is done in hot blood, and the Christian's in cold. I
hope (in future lectures on the architecture of Pisa) to illustrate to you
the opposition between the Ghibelline Conti, counts, and the Guelphic
Visconti, viscounts or "against counts," which issues, for one thing, in
that, by all men blamed as too deliberate, death of the Count Ugolino
della Gherardesca. The Count Ugolino was a traitor, who entirely deserved
death; but another Count of Pisa, entirely faithful to the Ghibelline
cause, was put to death by Charles of Anjou, not only in cold blood, but
with resolute infliction of Ugolino's utmost grief;—not in the
dungeon, but in the full light of day—his son being first put to
death before his eyes. And among the pieces of heraldry most significant
in the middle ages, the asp on the shield of the Guelphic viscounts is to
be much remembered by you as a sign of this merciless cruelty of mistaken
religion; mistaken, but not in the least hypocritical. It has perfect
confidence in itself, and can answer with serenity for all its deeds. The
serenity of heart never appears in the guilty Infidels; they die in
despair or gloom, greatly satisfactory to adverse religious minds.
235. The French Pope, then, Urban of Troyes, had sent for Charles of
Anjou; who would not have answered his call, even with all the strength of
Anjou and Provence, had not Scylla of the Tyrrhene Sea been on his side.
Pisa, with eighty galleys (the Sicilian fleet added to her own), watched
and defended the coasts of Rome. An irresistible storm drove her fleet to
shelter; and Charles, in a single ship, reached the mouth of the Tiber,
and found lodgings at Rome in the convent of St. Paul. His wife meanwhile
spent her dowry in increasing his land army, and led it across the Alps.
How he had got his wife, and her dowry, we must hear in Villani's words,
as nearly as I can give their force in English, only, instead of the
English word pilgrim, I shall use the Italian 'romeo' for the sake both of
all English Juliets, and that you may better understand the close of the
sixth canto of the Paradise.
236. "Now the Count Raymond Berenger had for his inheritance all Provence
on this side Rhone; and he was a wise and courteous signor, and of noble
state, and virtuous; and in his time they did honourable things; and to
his court came by custom all the gentlemen of Provence, and France, and
Catalonia, for his courtesy and noble state; and there they made many
cobbled verses, and Provençal songs of great sentences."
237. I must stop to tell you that 'cobbled' or 'coupled' verses mean
rhymes, as opposed to the dull method of Latin verse; for we have now got
an ear for jingle, and know that dove rhymes to love. Also,﹃songs of
great sentences﹄mean didactic songs, containing much in little, (like the
new didactic Christian painting,) of which an example (though of a later
time) will give you a better idea than any description.
"Vraye foy de necessité,
Non tant seulement d'equité,
Nous fait de Dieu sept choses croire:
C'est sa doulce nativité,
Son baptesme d'humilité,
Et sa mort, digne de mémoire:
Son descens en la chartre noire,
Et sa resurrection, voire;
S'ascencion d'auctorité,
La venue judicatoire,
Ou ly bons seront mis en gloire,
Et ly mals en adversité."
238.﹃And while they were making these cobbled verses and harmonious
creeds, there came a romeo to court, returning from the shrine of St.
James.﹄I must stop again just to say that he ought to have been called a
pellegrino, not a romeo, for the three kinds of wanderers are,—Palmer,
one who goes to the Holy Land; Pilgrim, one who goes to Spain; and Romeo,
one who goes to Rome. Probably this romeo had been to both. "He stopped at
Count Raymond's court, and was so wise and worthy (valoroso), and so won
the Count's grace, that he made him his master and guide in all things.
Who also, maintaining himself in honest and religious customs of life, in
a little time, by his industry and good sense, doubled the Count's
revenues three times over, maintaining always a great and honoured court.
Now the Count had four daughters, and no son; and by the sense and
provision of the good romeo—(I can do no better than translate
'procaccio' provision, but it is only a makeshift for the word derived
from procax, meaning the general talent of prudent impudence, in getting
forward; 'forwardness,' has a good deal of the true sense, only diluted;)—well,
by the sense and—progressive faculty, shall we say?—of the
good pilgrim, he first married the eldest daughter, by means of money, to
the good King Louis of France, saying to the Count, 'Let me alone,—Lascia-mi-fare—and
never mind the expense, for if you marry the first one well, I'll marry
you all the others cheaper, for her relationship."
239. "And so it fell out, sure enough; for incontinently the King of
England (Henry III.) because he was the King of France's relation, took
the next daughter, Eleanor, for very little money indeed; next, his
natural brother, elect King of the Romans, took the third; and, the
youngest still remaining unmarried,—says the good romeo, 'Now for
this one, I will you to have a strong man for son-in-law, who shall be thy
heir;'—and so he brought it to pass. For finding Charles, Count of
Anjou, brother of the King Louis, he said to Raymond, "'Give her now to
him, for his fate is to be the best man in the world,'—prophesying
of him. And so it was done. And after all this it came to pass, by envy
which ruins all good, that the barons of Provence became jealous of the
good romeo, and accused him to the Count of having ill-guided his goods,
and made Raymond demand account of them. Then the good romeo said, 'Count,
I have served thee long, and have put thee from little state into mighty,
and for this, by false counsel of thy people, thou art little grateful. I
came into thy court a poor romeo; I have lived honestly on thy means; now,
make to be given to me my little mule and my staff and my wallet, as I
came, and I will make thee quit of all my service.' The Count would not he
should go; but for nothing would he stay; and so he came, and so he
departed, that no one ever knew whence he had come, nor whither he went.
It was the thought of many that he was indeed a sacred spirit."
240. This pilgrim, you are to notice, is put by Dante in the orb of
justice, as a just servant; the Emperor Justinian being the image of a
just ruler. Justinian's law-making turned out well for England; but the
good romeo's match-making ended ill for it; and for Borne, and Naples
also. For Beatrice of Provence resolved to be a queen like her three
sisters, and was the prompting spirit of Charles's expedition to Italy.
She was crowned with him, Queen of Apulia and Sicily, on the day of the
Epiphany, 1265; she and her husband bringing gifts that day of magical
power enough; and Charles, as soon as the feast of coronation was over,
set out to give battle to Manfred and his Saracens. "And this Charles,"
says Villani, "was wise, and of sane counsel; and of prowess in arms, and
fierce, and much feared and redoubted by all the kings in the world;—magnanimous
and of high purposes; fearless in the carrying forth of every great
enterprise; firm in every adversity; a verifier of his every word;
speaking little,—doing much; and scarcely ever laughed, and then but
a little; sincere, and without flaw, as a religious and catholic person;
stern in justice, and fierce in look; tall and nervous in person, olive
coloured, and with a large nose, and well he appeared a royal majesty more
than other men. Much he watched, and little he slept; and used to say that
so much time as one slept, one lost; generous to his men-at-arms, but
covetous to acquire land, signory, and coin, come how it would, to furnish
his enterprises and wars: in courtiers, servants of pleasure, or jocular
persons, he delighted never."
241. To this newly crowned and resolute king, riding south from Rome,
Manfred, from his vale of Nocera under Mount St. Augelo, sends to offer
conditions of peace. Jehu the son of Nimshi is not swifter of answer to
Ahaziah's messenger than the fiery Christian king, in his 'What hast thou
to do with peace?' Charles answers the messengers with his own lips: "Tell
the Sultan of Nocera, this day I will put him in hell, or he shall put me
in paradise."
242. Do not think it the speech of a hypocrite. Charles was as fully
prepared for death that day as ever Scotch Covenanter fighting for his
Holy League; and as sure that death would find him, if it found, only to
glorify and bless. Balfour of Burley against Claverhouse is not more
convinced in heart that he draws the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. But
all the knightly pride of Claverhouse himself is knit together, in
Charles, with fearless faith, and religious wrath. "This Saracen scum, led
by a bastard German,—traitor to his creed, usurper among his race,—dares
it look me, a Christian knight, a prince of the house of France, in the
eyes? Tell the Sultan of Nocera, to-day I put him in hell, or he puts me
in paradise."
They are not passionate words neither; any more than hypocritical ones.
They are measured, resolute, and the fewest possible. He never wasted
words, nor showed his mind, but when he meant it should be known.
243. The messenger returned, thus answered; and the French king rode on
with his host. Manfred met him in the plain of Grandella, before
Benevento. I have translated the name of the fortress 'Welcome.' It was
altered, as you may remember, from Maleventum, for better omen; perhaps,
originally, only {Greek: *maloeis*}—a rock full of wild goats?—associating
it thus with the meaning of Tagliacozzo.
244. Charles divided his army into four companies. The captain of his own
was our English Guy de Montfort, on whom rested the power and the fate of
his grandfather, the pursuer of the Waldensian shepherds among the rocks
of the wild goats. The last, and it is said the goodliest, troop was of
the exiled Guelphs of Florence, under Guido Guerra, whose name you already
know. "These," said Manfred, as he watched them ride into their ranks,
"cannot lose to-day." He meant that if he himself was the victor, he would
restore these exiles to their city. The event of the battle was decided by
the treachery of the Count of Caserta, Manfred's brother-in-law. At the
end of the day only a few knights remained with him, whom he led in the
last charge. As he helmed himself, the crest fell from his helmet.﹃Hoc
est signum Dei,﹄he said,—so accepting what he saw to be the purpose
of the Ruler of all things; not claiming God as his friend. not asking
anything of Him, as if His purpose could be changed; not fearing Him as an
enemy; but accepting simply His sign that the appointed day of death was
come. He rode into the battle armed like a nameless soldier, and lay
unknown among the dead.
245. And in him died all southern Italy. Never, after that day's
treachery, did her nobles rise, or her people prosper.
Of the finding of the body of Manfred, and its casting forth, accursed,
you may read, if you will, the story in Dante. I trace for you to-day
rapidly only the acts of Charles after this victory, and its consummation,
three years later, by the defeat of Conradin.
The town of Benevento had offered no resistance to Charles, but he gave it
up to pillage, and massacred its inhabitants. The slaughter,
indiscriminate, continued for eight days; the women and children were
slain with the men, being of Saracen blood. Manfred's wife, Sybil of
Epirus, his children, and all his barons, died, or were put to death, in
the prisons of Provence. With the young Conrad, all the faithful
Ghibel-line knights of Pisa were put to death. The son of Frederick of
Antioch, who drove the Guelphs from Florence, had his eyes torn out, and
was hanged, he being the last child of the house of Suabia. Twenty-four of
the barons of Calabria were executed at Gallipoli, and at Home. Charles
cut off the feet of those who had fought for Conrad; then—fearful
lest they should be pitied—shut them into a house of wood, and
burned them. His lieutenant in Sicily, William of the Standard, besieged
the town of Augusta, which defended itself with some fortitude, but was
betrayed, and all its inhabitants, (who must have been more than three
thousand, for there were a thousand able to bear arms,) massacred in cold
blood; the last of them searched for in their hiding-places, when the
streets were empty, dragged to the sea-shore, then beheaded, and their
bodies thrown into the sea. Throughout Calabria the Christian judges of
Charles thus forgave his enemies. And the Mohammedan power and heresy
ended in Italy, and she became secure in her Catholic creed.
246. Not altogether secure under French dominion. After fourteen years of
misery, Sicily sang her angry vespers, and a Calabrian admiral burnt the
fleet of Charles before his eyes, where Scylla rules her barking Salamis.
But the French king died in prayerful peace, receiving the sacrament with
these words of perfectly honest faith, as he reviewed his past life: "Lord
God, as I truly believe that you are my Saviour, so I pray you to have
mercy on my soul; and as I truly made the conquest of Sicily more to serve
the Holy Church than for my own covetousness, so I pray you to pardon my
sins."
247. You are to note the two clauses of this prayer. He prays absolute
mercy, on account of his faith in Christ; but remission of purgatory, in
proportion to the quantity of good work he has done, or meant to do, as
against evil. You are so much wiser in these days, you think, not
believing in purgatory; and so much more benevolent,—not massacring
women and children. But we must not be too proud of not believing in
purgatory, unless we are quite sure of our real desire to be purified: and
as to our not massacring children, it is true that an English gentleman
will not now himself willingly put a knife into the throat either of a
child or a lamb; but he will kill any quantity of children by disease in
order to increase his rents, as unconcernedly as he will eat any quantity
of mutton. And as to absolute massacre, I do not suppose a child feels so
much pain in being killed as a full-grown man, and its life is of less
value to it. No pain either of body or thought through which you could put
an infant, would be comparable to that of a good son, or a faithful lover,
dying slowly of a painful wound at a distance from a family dependent upon
him, or a mistress devoted to him. But the victories of Charles, and the
massacres, taken in sum, would not give a muster-roll of more than twenty
thousand dead; men, women, and children counted all together. On the
plains of France, since I first began to speak to you on the subject of
the arts of peace, at least five hundred thousand men, in the prime of
life, have been massacred by the folly of one Christian emperor, the
insolence of another, and the mingling of mean rapacity with meaner
vanity, which Christian nations now call 'patriotism.'
248. But that the Crusaders, (whether led by St. Louis or by his brother,)
who habitually lived by robbery, and might be swiftly enraged to murder,
were still too savage to conceive the spirit or the character of this
Christ whose cross they wear, I have again and again alleged to you; not,
I imagine, without question from many who have been accustomed to look to
these earlier ages as authoritative in doctrine, if not in example. We
alike err in supposing them more spiritual or more dark, than our own.
They had not yet attained to the knowledge which we have despised, nor
dispersed from their faith the shadows with which we have again
overclouded ours.
Their passions, tumultuous and merciless as the Tyrrhene Sea, raged indeed
with the danger, but also with the uses, of naturally appointed storm;
while ours, pacific in corruption, languish in vague maremma of misguided
pools; and are pestilential most surely as they retire.
LECTURE X. FLEUR DE LYS.
249. Through all the tempestuous winter which during the period of
history we have been reviewing, weakened, in their war with the opposed
rocks of religious or knightly pride, the waves of the Tuscan Sea,
there has been slow increase of the Favonian power which is to bring
fruitfulness to the rock, peace to the wave. The new element which is
introduced in the thirteenth century, and perfects for a little time the
work of Christianity, at least in some few chosen souls, is the law of
Order and Charity, of intellectual and moral virtue, which it now became
the function of every great artist to teach, and of every true citizen
to maintain.
250. I have placed on your table one of the earliest existing engravings
by a Florentine hand, representing the conception which the national mind
formed of this spirit of order and tranquillity, "Cosmico," or the Equity
of Kosmos, not by senseless attraction, but by spiritual thought and law.
He stands pointing with his left hand to the earth, set only with tufts of
grass; in his right hand he holds the ordered system of the universe—heaven
and earth in one orb;—the heaven made cosmic by the courses of its
stars; the earth cosmic by
{Illustration: PLATE IX.—THE CHARGE TO ADAM. MODERN ITALIAN. }
the seats of authority and fellowship,—castles on the hills and
cities in the plain.
251. The tufts of grass under the feet of this figure will appear to you,
at first, grotesquely formal. But they are only the simplest expression,
in such herbage, of the subjection of all vegetative force to this law of
order, equity, or symmetry, which, made by the Greek the principal method
of his current vegetative sculpture, subdues it, in the hand of Cora or
Triptolemus, into the merely triple sceptre, or animates it, in Florence,
to the likeness of the Fleur-de-lys.
252. I have already stated to you that if any definite flower is meant by
these triple groups of leaves, which take their authoritatively typical
form in the crowns of the Cretan and Laciuian Hera, it is not the violet,
but the purple iris; or sometimes, as in Pindar's description of the birth
of Ismus, the yellow water-flag, which you know so well in spring, by the
banks of your Oxford streams. {1} But, in general, it means simply the
springing of beautiful and orderly vegetation in fields upon which the dew
falls pure. It is the expression, therefore, of peace on the redeemed and
cultivated earth, and of the pleasure of heaven in the uncareful happiness
of men clothed without labour, and fed without fear.
{Footnote 1: In the catalogues of the collection of drawings in this room,
and in my "Queen of the Air" you will find all that I would ask you to
notice about the various names and kinds of the flower, and their symbolic
use.—Note only, with respect to our present purpose, that while the
true white lily is placed in the hands of the Angel of the Annunciation
even by Florentine artists, in their general design, the fleur-de-lys is
given to him by Giovaiini Pisano on the façade of Orvieto; and that the
flower in the crown-circlets of European kings answers, as I stated to you
in my lecture on the Corona, to the Narcissus fillet of early Greece; the
crown of abundance and rejoicing.}
253. In the passage, so often read by us, which announces the advent of
Christianity as the dawn of peace on earth, we habitually neglect great
part of the promise, owing to the false translation of the second clause
of the sentence. I cannot understand how it should be still needful to
point out to you here in Oxford that neither the Greek words {Greek: *"en
anthriopois evdokia,"*} nor those of the vulgate,﹃in terra pax hominibus
bonæ voluntatis,﹄in the slightest degree justify our English words,
"goodwill to men."
Of God's goodwill to men, and to all creatures, for ever, there needed no
proclamation by angels. But that men should be able to please Him,—that
their wills should be made holy, and they should not only possess peace in
themselves, but be able to give joy to their God, in the sense in which He
afterwards is pleased with His own baptized Son;—this was a new
thing for Angels to declare, and for shepherds to believe.
254. And the error was made yet more fatal by its repetition in a passage
of parallel importance,—the thanksgiving, namely, offered by Christ,
that His Father, while He had hidden what it was best to know, not from
the wise and prudent, but from some among the wise and prudent, and had
revealed it unto babes; not 'for so it seemed good' in His sight, but
'that there might be well pleasing in His sight,'—namely, that the
wise and simple might equally live in the necessary knowledge, and enjoyed
presence, of God. And if, having accurately read these vital passages, you
then as carefully consider the tenour of the two songs of human joy in the
birth of Christ, the Magnificat, and the Nunc dimittis, you will find the
theme of both to be, not the newness of blessing, but the equity which
disappoints the cruelty and humbles the strength of men; which scatters
the proud in the imagination of their hearts; which fills the hungry with
good things; and is not only the glory of Israel, but the light of the
Gentiles.
255. As I have been writing these paragraphs, I have been checking myself
almost at every word,—wondering, Will they be restless on their
seats at this, and thinking all the while that they did not come here to
be lectured on Divinity? You may have been a little impatient,—how
could it well be otherwise? Had I been explaining points of anatomy, and
showing you how you bent your necks and straightened your legs, you would
have thought me quite in my proper function; because then, when you went
with a party of connoisseurs through the Vatican, you could point out to
them the insertion of the clavicle in the Apollo Belvidere; and in the
Sistine Chapel the perfectly accurate delineation of the tibia in the legs
of Christ. Doubtless; but you know I am lecturing at present on the goffi,
and not on Michael Angelo; and the goffi are very careless about clavicles
and shin-bones; so that if, after being lectured on anatomy, you went into
the Campo Santo of Pisa, you would simply find nothing to look at, except
three tolerably well-drawn skeletons. But if after being lectured on
theology, you go into the Campo Santo of Pisa, you will find not a little
to look at, and to remember.
256. For a single instance, you know Michael Angelo is admitted to have
been so far indebted to these goffi as to borrow from the one to whose
study of mortality I have just referred, Orcagna, the gesture of his
Christ in the Judgment, He borrowed, however, accurately speaking, the
position only, not the gesture; nor the meaning of it. {1} You all
remember the action of Michael Angelo's Christ,—the right hand
raised as if in violence of reprobation; and the left closed across His
breast, as refusing all mercy. The action is one which appeals to persons
of very ordinary sensations, and is very naturally adopted by the
Renaissance painter, both for its popular effect, and its capabilities for
the exhibition of his surgical science. But the old painter-theologian,
though indeed he showed the right hand of Christ lifted, and the left hand
laid across His breast, had another meaning in the actions. The fingers of
the left hand are folded, in both the figures; but in Michael Angelo's as
if putting aside an appeal; in Orcagna's, the fingers are bent to draw
back the drapery from the right side. The right hand is raised by Michael
Angelo as in anger; by Orcagna, only to show the wounded palm. And as, to
the believing disciples, He showed them His hands and His side, so that
they were glad,—so, to the unbelievers, at their judgment, He shows
the wounds in hand and side. They shall look on Him whom they pierced.
{Footnote: I found all this in M. Didron's Iconographie, above quoted; I
had never noticed the difference between the two figures myself.}
257. And thus, as we follow our proposed examination of the arts of the
Christian centuries, our understanding of their work will be absolutely
limited by the degree of our sympathy with the religion which our fathers
have bequeathed to us. You cannot interpret classic marbles without
knowing and loving your Pindar and Æschylus, neither can you interpret
Christian pictures without knowing and loving your Isaiah and Matthew. And
I shall have continually to examine texts of the one as I would verses of
the other; nor must you retract yourselves from the labour in suspicion
that I desire to betray your scepticism, or undermine your positivism,
because I recommend to you the accurate study of books which have hitherto
been the light of the world.
258. The change, then, in the minds of their readers at this date, which
rendered it possible for them to comprehend the full purport of
Christianity, was in the rise of the new desire for equity and rest,
amidst what had hitherto been mere lust for spoil, and joy in battle. The
necessity for justice was felt in the now extending commerce; the desire
of rest in the now pleasant and fitly furnished habitation; and the energy
which formerly could only be satisfied in strife, now found enough both of
provocation and antagonism in the invention of art, and the forces of
nature. I have in this course of lectures endeavoured to fasten your
attention on the Florentine Revolution of 1250, because its date is so
easily memorable, and it involves the principles of every subsequent one,
so as to lay at once the foundations of whatever greatness Florence
afterwards achieved by her mercantile and civic power. But I must not
close even this slight sketch of the central history of Val d'Aruo without
requesting you, as you find time, to associate in your minds, with this
first revolution, the effects of two which followed it, being indeed
necessary parts of it, in the latter half of the century.
259. Remember then that the first, in 1250, is embryonic; and the
significance of it is simply the establishment of order, and justice
against violence and iniquity. It is equally against the power of knights
and priests, so far as either are unjust,—not otherwise.
When Manfred fell at Benevento, his lieutenant, the Count Guido Novello,
was in command of Florence. He was just, but weak; and endeavoured to
temporize with the Guelphs. His effort ought to be notable to you, because
it was one of the wisest and most far-sighted ever made in Italy; but it
failed for want of resolution, as the gentlest and best men are too apt to
fail. He brought from Bologna two knights of the order—then recently
established—of joyful brethren; afterwards too fatally corrupted,
but at this time pure in purpose. They constituted an order of chivalry
which was to maintain peace, obey the Church, and succour widows and
orphans; but to be bound by no monastic vows. Of these two knights, he
chose one Guelph, the other Ghibelline; and under their balanced power
Gruido hoped to rank the forces of the civil, manufacturing, and trading
classes, divided into twelve corporations of higher and lower arts. {1}
But the moment this beautiful arrangement was made, all parties—Guelph,
Ghibelline, and popular,—turned unanimously against Count Guido
Novello. The benevolent but irresolute captain indeed gathered his men
into the square of the Trinity; but the people barricaded the streets
issuing from it; and Guido, heartless, and unwilling for civil warfare,
left the city with his Germans in good order. And so ended the incursion
of the infidel Tedeschi for this time. The Florentines then dismissed the
merry brothers whom the Tedeschi had set over them, and besought help from
Orvieto and Charles of Anjou; who sent them Guy de Montfort and eight
hundred French riders; the blessing of whose presence thus, at their own
request, was granted them on Easter Day, 1267.
{Footnote: The seven higher arts were, Lawyers, Physicians, Bankers,
Merchants of Foreign Goods, Wool Manufacturers, Silk Manufacturers,
Furriers. The five lower arts were, Retail Sellers of Cloth, Butchers,
Shoemakers, Masons and Carpenters, Smiths.}
On Candlemas, if you recollect, 1251, they open their gates to the
Germans; and on Easter, 1267, to the French.
260. Remember, then, this revolution, as coming between the battles of
Welcome and Tagliacozzo; and that it expresses the lower revolutionary
temper of the trades, with English and French assistance. Its immediate
result was the appointment of five hundred and sixty lawyers, woolcombers,
and butchers, to deliberate upon all State questions,—under which
happy ordinances you will do well, in your own reading, to leave Florence,
that you may watch, for a while, darling little Pisa, all on fire for the
young Conradin. She sent ten vessels across the Gulf of Genoa to fetch
him; received his cavalry in her plain of Sarzana; and putting five
thousand of her own best sailors into thirty ships, sent them to do what
they could, all down the coast of Italy. Down they went; startling Gaeta
with an attack as they passed; found Charles of Anjou's French and
Sicilian fleet at Messina, fought it, beat it, and burned twenty-seven of
its ships.
261. Meantime, the Florentines prospered as they might with their
religious-democratic constitution,—until the death, in the odour of
sanctity, of Charles of Anjou, and of that Pope Martin IV. whose tomb was
destroyed with Urban's at Perugia. Martin died, as you may remember, of
eating Bolsena eels,—that being his share in the miracles of the
lake; and you will do well to remember at the same time, that the price of
the lake eels was three soldi a pound; and that Niccola of Pisa worked at
Siena for six soldi a day, and his son Giovanni for four.
262. And as I must in this place bid farewell, for a time, to Niccola and
to his son, let me remind you of the large commission which the former
received on the occasion of the battle of Tagliacozzo, and its subsequent
massacres, when the victor, Charles, having to his own satisfaction
exterminated the seed of infidelity, resolves, both in thanksgiving, and
for the sake of the souls of the slain knights for whom some hope might
yet be religiously entertained, to found an abbey on the battle-field. In
which purpose he sent for Niccola to Naples, and made him build on the
field of Tagliacozzo, a church and abbey of the richest; and caused to be
buried therein the infinite number of the bodies of those who died in that
battle day; ordering farther, that, by many monks, prayer should be made
for their souls, night and day. In which fabric the king was so pleased
with Niccola's work that he rewarded and honoured him highly.
263. Do you not begin to wonder a little more what manner of man this
Nicholas was, who so obediently throws down the towers which offend the
Ghibelliues, and so skilfully puts up the pinnacles which please the
Guelphs? A passive power, seemingly, he;—plastic in the hands of any
one who will employ him to build, or to throw down. On what exists of
evidence, demonstrably in these years here is the strongest brain of
Italy, thus for six shilling a day doing what it is bid.
264. I take farewell of him then, for a little time, ratifying to you, as
far as my knowledge permits, the words of my first master in Italian art,
Lord Lindsay.
"In comparing the advent of Niccola Pisano to that of the sun at his
rising, I am conscious of no exaggeration; on the contrary, it is the only
simile by which I can hope to give you an adequate impression of his
brilliancy and power relatively to the age in which he flourished. Those
sons of Erebus, the American Indians, fresh from their traditional
subterranean world, and gazing for the first time on the gradual dawning
of the day in the East, could not have been more dazzled, more astounded,
when the sun actually appeared, than the popes and podestas, friars and
freemasons must have been in the thirteenth century, when from among the
Biduinos, Bonannos, and Antealmis of the twelfth, Niccola emerged in his
glory, sovereign and supreme, a fount of light, diffusing warmth and
radiance over Christendom. It might be too much to parallel him in actual
genius with Dante and Shakspeare; they stand alone and unapproachable,
each on his distinct pinnacle of the temple of Christian song; and yet
neither of them can boast such extent and durability of influence, for
whatever of highest excellence has been achieved in sculpture and
painting, not in Italy only, but throughout Europe, has been in obedience
to the impulse he primarily gave, and in following up the principle which
he first struck out.
"His latter days were spent in repose at Pisa, but the precise year of his
death is uncertain; Vasari fixes it in 1275; it could not have been much
later. He was buried in the Campo Santo. Of his personal character we,
alas! know nothing; even Shakspeare is less a stranger to us. But that it
was noble, simple, and consistent, and free from the petty foibles that
too frequently beset genius, may be fairly presumed from the works he has
left behind him, and from the eloquent silence of tradition."
265. Of the circumstances of Niccola Pisano's death, or the ceremonials
practised at it, we are thus left in ignorance.
The more exemplary death of Charles of Aujou took place on the 7th of
January, then, 1285; leaving the throne of Naples to a boy of twelve; and
that of Sicily, to a Prince of Spain. Various discord, between French,
Spanish, and Calabrese vices, thenceforward paralyzes South Italy, and
Florence becomes the leading power of the Guelph faction. She had been
inflamed and pacified through continual paroxysms of civil quarrel during
the decline of Charles's power; but, throughout, the influence of the
nobles declines, by reason of their own folly and insolence; while the
people, though with no small degree of folly and insolence on their own
side, keep hold of their main idea of justice. In the meantime, similar
assertions of law against violence, and the nobility of useful occupation,
as compared with that of idle rapine, take place in Bologna, Siena, and
even at Rome, where Bologna sends her senator, Branca Leone, (short for
Branca-di-Leone, Lion's Grip,) whose inflexible and rightly guarded reign
of terror to all evil and thievish persons, noble or other, is one of the
few passages of history during the middle ages, in which the real power of
civic virtue may be seen exercised without warping by party spirit, or
weakness of vanity or fear.
266. And at last, led by a noble, Giano della Bella, the people of
Florence write and establish their final condemnation of noblesse living
by rapine, those 'Ordinamenti della Giustizia,' which practically excluded
all idle persons from government, and determined that the priors, or
leaders of the State, should be priors, or leaders of its arts and
productive labour; that its head 'podesta' or 'power' should be the
standard-bearer of justice; and its council or parliament composed of
charitable men, or good men: "boni viri," in the sense from which the
French formed their noun 'bonte.'
The entire governing body was thus composed, first, of the Podestas,
standard-bearer of justice; then of his military captain; then of his
lictor, or executor; then of the twelve priors of arts and liberties—properly,
deliberators on the daily occupations, interests, and pleasures of the
body politic;—and, finally, of the parliament of "kind men," whose
business was to determine what kindness could be shown to other states, by
way of foreign policy.
267. So perfect a type of national government has only once been reached
in the history of the human race. And in spite of the seeds of evil in its
own impatience, and in the gradually increasing worldliness of the
mercantile body; in spite of the hostility of the angry soldier, and the
malignity of the sensual priest, this government gave to Europe the entire
cycle of Christian art, properly so called, and every highest Master of
labour, architectural, scriptural, or pictorial, practised in true
understanding of the faith of Christ;—Orcagna, Giotto, Brunelleschi,
Lionardo, Luini as his pupil, Lippi, Luca, Angelico, Botticelli, and
Michael Angelo.
268. I have named two men, in this group, whose names are more familiar to
your ears than any others, Angelico and Michael Angelo;—who yet are
absent from my list of those whose works I wish you to study, being both
extravagant in their enthusiasm,—the one for the nobleness of the
spirit, and the other for that of the flesh. I name them now, because the
gifts each had were exclusively Florentine; in whatever they have become
to the mind of Europe since, they are utterly children of the Val d'Arno.
269. You are accustomed, too carelessly, to think of Angelico as a child
of the Church, rather than of Florence. He was born in l387,—just
eleven years, that is to say, after the revolt of Florence against
the Church, and ten after the endeavour of the Church to recover her power
by the massacres of Faenza and Cesena. A French and English army of
pillaging riders were on the other side of the Alps,—six thousand
strong; the Pope sent for it; Robert Cardinal of Geneva brought it into
Italy. The Florentines fortified their Apennines against it; but it took
winter quarters at Cesena, where the Cardinal of Geneva massacred five
thousand persons in a day, and the children and sucklings were literally
dashed against the stones.
270. That was the school which the Christian Church had prepared for their
brother Angelica. But Fèsole, secluding him in the shade of her mount of
Olives, and Florence revealing to him the true voice of his Master, in the
temple of St. Mary of the Flower, taught him his lesson of peace on earth,
and permitted him his visions of rapture in heaven. And when the massacre
of Cesena was found to have been in vain, and the Church was compelled to
treat with the revolted cities who had united to mourn for her victories,
Florence sent her a living saint, Catherine of Siena, for her political
Ambassador.
271. Of Michael Angelo I need not tell you: of the others, we will read
the lives, and think over them one by one; the great fact which I have
written this course of lectures to enforce upon your minds is the
dependence of all the arts on the virtue of the State, and its kindly
order.
The absolute mind and state of Florence, for the seventy years of her
glory, from 1280 to 1350, you find quite simply and literally described in
the ll2th Psalm, of which I read you the descriptive verses, in the words
in which they sang it, from this typically perfect manuscript of the time:—
Gloria et divitie in domo ejus, justitia ejus manet in seculum seculi.
Exortum est in tenebris lumen reotis, misericors, et miserator, et
Justus. Jocundus homo, qui miseretur, et commodat: disponet sermones suos in
judicio. Dispersit, dedit pauperibus; justitia ejus manet in seculum seculi;
cornu ejus exaltabitur in gloria.
I translate simply, praying you to note as the true one, the literal
meaning of every word:—
Glory and riches are in his house. His justice remains for ever.
Light is risen in darkness for the straightforward people.
He is merciful in heart, merciful in deed, and just.
A jocund man; who is merciful, and lends.
He will dispose his words in judgment.
He hath dispersed. He hath given to the poor. His justice remain!
for ever. His horn shall be exalted in glory.
272. With vacillating, but steadily prevailing effort, the Florentines
maintained this life and character for full half a century.
You will please now look at my staff of the year 1300, {Footnote: Page 33
in my second lecture on Engraving.} adding the names of Dante and Orcagna,
having each their separate masterful or prophetic function.
That is Florence's contribution to the intellectual work of the world
during these years of justice. Now, the promise of Christianity is given
with lesson from the fleur-de-lys: Seek ye first the royalty of God, and
His justice, "and all these things," material wealth,﹃shall be added unto
you.﹄It is a perfectly clear, perfectly literal,—never failing and
never unfulfilled promise. There is no instance in the whole cycle of
history of its not being accomplished,—fulfilled to the uttermost,
with full measure, pressed down, and running over.
273. Now hear what Florence was, and what wealth she had got by her
justice. In the year 1330, before she fell, she had within her walls a
hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, of whom all the men—(laity)—between
the ages of fifteen and seventy, were ready at an instant to go out to
war, under their banners, in number twenty-four thousand. The army of her
entire territory was eighty thousand; and within it she counted fifteen
hundred noble, families, every one absolutely submissive to her gonfalier
of justice. She had within her walls a hundred and ten churches, seven
priories, and thirty hospitals for the sick and poor; of foreign guests,
on the average, fifteen hundred, constantly. From eight to ten thousand
children were taught to read in her schools. The town was surrounded by
some fifty square miles of uninterrupted garden, of olive, corn, vine,
lily, and rose.
And the monetary existence of England and France depended upon her wealth.
Two of her bankers alone had lent Edward III. of England five millions of
money (in sterling value of this present hour).
274. On the 10th of March, 1337, she was first accused, with truth, of
selfish breach of treaties. On the l0th of April, all her merchants in
France were imprisoned by Philip Valois; and presently afterwards Edward
of England failed, quite in your modern style, for his five millions.
These money losses would have been nothing to her; but on the 7th of
August, the captain of her army, Pietro de' Rossi of Parma, the
unquestioned best knight in Italy, received a chance spear-stroke before
Monselice, and died next day. He was the Bayard of Italy; and greater than
Bayard, because living in a nobler time. He never had failed in any
military enterprise, nor ever stained success with cruelty or shame. Even
the German troops under him loved him without bounds. To his companions he
gave gifts with such largesse, that his horse and armour were all that at
any time he called his own. Beautiful and pure as Sir Galahad, all that
was brightest in womanhood watched and honoured him.
And thus, 8th August, 1337, he went to his own place.—To-day I trace
the fall of Florence no more.
I will review the points I wish you to remember; and briefly meet, so far
as I can, the questions which I think should occur to you.
275. I have named Edward III. as our heroic type of Franchise. And yet I
have but a minute ago spoken of him as 'failing' in quite your modern
manner. I must correct my expression:—he had no intent of failing
when he borrowed; and did not spend his money on himself. Nevertheless, I
gave him as an example of frankness; but by no means of honesty. He is
simply the boldest and royalest of Free Riders; the campaign of Crecy is,
throughout, a mere pillaging foray. And the first point I wish you to
notice is the difference in the pecuniary results of living by robbery,
like Edward III., or by agriculture and just commerce, like the town of
Florence. That Florence can lend five millions to the King of England, and
loose them with little care, is the result of her olive gardens and her
honesty. Now hear the financial phenomena attending military exploits, and
a life of pillage.
276. I give you them in this precise year, 1338, in which the King of
England failed to the Florentines.
"He obtained from the prelates, barons, and knights of the
{Illustration: PLATE X.—THE NATIVITY. GIOVANNI PISANO. }
shires, one half of their wool for this year—a very valuable and
extraordinary grant. He seized all the tin﹃(above-ground, you mean Mr.
Henry!)﹄in Cornwall and Devonshire, took possession of the lands of all
priories alien, and of the money, jewels, and valuable effects of the
Lombard merchants. He demanded certain quantities of bread, corn, oats,
and bacon, from each county; borrowed their silver plate from many abbeys,
as well as great sums of money both abroad and at home; and pawned his
crown for fifty thousand florins." {1}
{Footnote 1: Henry's "History of England," book iv., chap. i.}
He pawns his queen's jewels next year; and finally summons all the
gentlemen of England who had forty pounds a year, to come and receive the
honour of knighthood, or pay to be excused!
277. II. The failures of Edward, or of twenty Edwards, would have done
Florence no harm, had she remained true to herself, and to her
neighbouring states. Her merchants only fall by their own increasing
avarice; and above all by the mercantile form of pillage, usury. The idea
that money could beget money, though more absurd than alchemy, had yet an
apparently practical and irresistibly tempting confirmation in the wealth
of villains, and the success of fools. Alchemy, in its day, led to pure
chemistry; and calmly yielded to the science it had fostered. But all
wholesome indignation against usurers was prevented, in the Christian
mind, by wicked and cruel religious hatred of the race of Christ. In the
end, Shakspeare himself, in his fierce effort against the madness,
suffered himself to miss his mark by making his usurer a Jew: the
Franciscan institution of the Mount of Pity failed before the lust of
Lombardy, and the logic of Augsburg; and, to this day, the worship of the
Immaculate Virginity of Money, mother of the Omnipotence of Money, is the
Protestant form of Madonna worship.
278. III. The usurer's fang, and the debtor's shame, might both have been
trodden down under the feet of Italy, had her knights and her workmen
remained true to each other. But the brotherhoods of Italy were not of
Cain to Abel—but of Cain to Cain. Every man's sword was against his
fellow. Pisa sank before Genoa at Meloria, the Italian Ægos-Potamos; Genoa
before Venice in the war of Chiozza, the Italian siege of Syracuse.
Florence sent her Brunelleschi to divert the waves of Serchio against the
walls of Lucca; Lucca her Castruccio, to hold mock tournaments before the
gates of vanquished Florence. The weak modern Italian reviles or bewails
the acts of foreign races, as if his destiny had depended upon these; let
him at least assume the pride, and bear the grief, of remembering that,
among all the virgin cities of his country, there has not been one which
would not ally herself with a stranger, to effect a sister's ruin.
279. Lastly. The impartiality with which I have stated the acts, so far as
known to me, and impulses, so far as discernible by me, of the contending
Church and Empire, cannot but give offence, or provoke suspicion, in the
minds of those among you who are accustomed to hear the cause of Religion
supported by eager disciples, or attacked by confessed enemies. My
confession of hostility would be open, if I were an enemy indeed; but I
have never possessed the knowledge, and have long ago been cured of the
pride, which makes men fervent in witness for the Church's virtue, or
insolent in declamation against her errors. The will of Heaven, which
grants the grace and ordains the diversities of Religion, needs no
defence, and sustains no defeat, by the humours of men; and our first
business in relation to it is to silence our wishes, and to calm our
fears. If, in such modest and disciplined temper, you arrange your
increasing knowledge of the history of mankind, you will have no final
difficulty in distinguishing the operation of the Master's law from the
consequences of the disobedience to it which He permits; nor will you
respect the law less, because, accepting only the obedience of love, it
neither hastily punishes, nor pompously rewards, with what men think
reward or chastisement. Not always under the feet of Korah the earth is
rent; not always at the call of Elijah the clouds gather; but the guarding
mountains for ever stand round about Jerusalem; and the rain, miraculous
evermore, makes green the fields for the evil and the good.
280. And if you will fix your minds only on the conditions of human life
which the Giver of it demands,﹃He hath shown thee, oh man, what is good,
and what doth thy Lord require of thee, but to do justice, and to love
mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God,﹄you will find that such obedience
is always acknowledged by temporal blessing. If, turning from the manifest
miseries of cruel ambition, and manifest wanderings of insolent belief,
you summon to your thoughts rather the state of unrecorded multitudes, who
laboured in silence, and adored in humility, widely as the snows of
Christendom brought memory of the Birth of Christ, or her spring sunshine,
of His Resurrection, you may know that the promise of the Bethlehem angels
has been literally fulfilled; and will pray that your English fields,
joyfully as the banks of Arno, may still dedicate their pure lilies to St.
Mary of the Flower.
APPENDIX. (NOTES ON THE PLATES ILLUSTRATING THIS VOLUME.)
In the delivery of the preceding Lectures, some account was given of the
theologic design of the sculptures by Giovanni Pisano at Orvieto, which I
intended to have printed separately, and in more complete form, in this
Appendix. But my strength does not now admit of my fulfilling the half of
my intentions, and I find myself, at present, tired, and so dead in
feeling, that I have no quickness in interpretation, or skill in
description of emotional work. I must content myself, therefore, for the
time, with a short statement of the points which I wish the reader to
observe in the Plates, and which were left unnoticed in the text.
The frontispiece is the best copy I can get, in permanent materials, of a
photograph of the course of the Arno, through Pisa, before the old banks
were destroyed. Two arches of the Ponte-a-Mare which was carried away in
the inundation of 1870, are seen in the distance; the church of La Spina,
in its original position overhanging the river; and the buttressed and
rugged walls of the mediaeval shore. Never more, any of these, to be seen
in reality, by living eyes.
PLATE I.—A small portion of a photograph of Nicolo Pisano's
Adoration of the Magi, on the pulpit of the Pisan Baptistery. The
intensely Greek character of the heads, and the severely impetuous
chiselling (learned from Late Roman rapid work), which drives the lines of
the drapery nearly straight, may be seen better in a fragment of this
limited measure than in the crowded massing of the entire subject. But it
may be observed also that there is both a thoughtfulness and a tenderness
in the features, whether of the Virgin or the attendant angel, which
already indicate an aim beyond that of Greek art.
PLATE II—The Pulpit of the Baptistery (of which the preceding plate
represents a portion). I have only given this general view for convenience
of reference. Beautiful photographs of the subject on a large scale are
easily attainable.
PLATE III.—The Fountain of Perugia. Executed from a sketch by Mr.
Arthur Severn. The perspective of the steps is not quite true; we both
tried to get it right, but found that it would be a day or two's work, to
little purpose, and so let them go at hazard. The inlaid pattern behind is
part of the older wall of the cathedral; the late door is of course
inserted.
PLATE IV., LETTER E.—From Norman Bible in the British Museum;
showing the moral temper which regulated common ornamentation in the
twelfth century.
PLATE V.—Door of the Baptistery at Pisa. The reader must note that,
although these plates are necessarily, in fineness of detail, inferior to
the photographs from which they are taken, they have the inestimable
advantage of permanence, and will not fade away into spectres when the
book is old. I am greatly puzzled by the richness of the current
ornamentation on the main pillars, as opposed to the general severity of
design. I never can understand how the men who indulged in this flowing
luxury of foliage were so stern in their masonry and figure-draperies.
PLATE VI.—Part of the lintel of the door represented on Plate V.,
enlarged. I intended, in the Lecture on Marble Couchant, to have insisted,
at some length, on the decoration of the lintel and side-posts, as one of
the most important phases of mystic ecclesiastical sculpture. But I find
the materials furnished by Lucca, Pisa, and Florence, for such an essay
are far too rich to be examined cursorily; the treatment even of this
single lintel could scarcely be enough explained in the close of the
Lecture. I must dwell on some points of it now.
Look back to Section 175 in "Aratra Pentelici," giving statement of the
four kinds of relief in sculpture. The uppermost of these plinths is of
the kind I have called 'round relief'; you might strike it out on a coin.
The lower is 'foliate relief'; it looks almost as if the figures had been
cut out of one layer of marble, and laid against another behind it.
The uppermost, at the distance of my diagram, or in nature itself, would
scarcely be distinguished at a careless glance from an egg-and-arrow
moulding. You could not have a more simple or forcible illustration of my
statement in the first chapter of "Aratra," that the essential business of
sculpture is to produce a series of agreeable bosses or rounded surfaces;
to which, if possible, some meaning may afterwards be attached. In the
present instance, every egg becomes an angel, or evangelist, and every
arrow a lily, or a wing. {1} The whole is in the most exquisitely finished
Byzantine style.
{Footnote: In the contemporary south door of the Duomo of Genoa, the Greek
moulding is used without any such transformation.}
I am not sure of being right in my interpretation of the meaning of these
figures; but I think there can be little question about it. There are
eleven altogether; the three central, Christ with His mother and St.
Joseph; then, two evangelists, with two alternate angels, on each side.
Each of these angels carries a rod, with a fleur-de-lys termination; their
wings decorate the intermediate ridges (formed, in a pure Greek moulding,
by the arrows); and, behind the heads of all the figures, there is now a
circular recess; once filled, I doubt not, by a plate of gold. The Christ,
and the Evangelists, all carry books, of which each has a mosaic, or
intaglio ornament, in the shape of a cross. I could not show you a more
severe or perfectly representative piece of architectural
sculpture.
The heads of the eleven figures are as simply decorative as the ball
flowers are in our English Gothic tracery; the slight irregularity
produced by different gesture and character giving precisely the sort of
change which a good designer wishes to see in the parts of a consecutive
ornament.
The moulding closes at each extremity with a palm-tree, correspondent in
execution with those on coins of Syracuse; for the rest, the interest of
it consists only in these slight variations of attitude by which the
figures express wonder or concern at some event going on in their
presence. They are looking down; and I do not doubt, are intended to be
the heavenly witnesses of the story engraved on the stone below,—The
Life and Death of the Baptist.
The lower stone on which this is related, is a model of skill in Fiction,
properly so called. In Fictile art, in Fictile history, it is equally
exemplary. 'Feigning' or 'affecting' in the most exquisite way by
fastening intensely on the principal points.
Ask yourselves what are the principal points to be insisted on, in the
story of the Baptist.
He came, "preaching the Baptism of Repentance for the remission of sins."
That is his Advice, or Order-preaching.
And he came, "to bear witness of the Light."﹃Behold the Lamb of God,
which taketh away the sins of the world.﹄That is his declaration, or
revelation-preaching.
And the end of his own life is in the practice of this preaching—if
you will think of it—under curious difficulties in both kinds.
Difficulties in putting away sin—difficulties in obtaining sight.
The first half of the stone begins with the apocalyptic preaching. Christ,
represented as in youth, is set under two trees, in the wilderness. St.
John is scarcely at first seen; he is only the guide, scarcely the
teacher, of the crowd of peoples, nations, and languages, whom he leads,
pointing them to the Christ. Without doubt, all these figures have
separate meaning. I am too ignorant to interpret it; but observe
generally, they are the thoughtful and wise of the earth, not its ruffians
or rogues. This is not, by any means, a general amnesty to blackguards,
and an apocalypse to brutes, which St. John is preaching. These are quite
the best people he can find to call, or advise. You see many of them carry
rolls of paper in their hands, as he does himself. In comparison with the
books of the upper cornice, these have special meaning, as throughout
Byzantine design.
"Adverte quod patriarchæ et prophetse pinguntur cum rotulis
in manibus; quidam vero apostoli cum libris, et quidam
cum rotulis. Nempe quia ante Christi adventum fides figurative
ostendebatur, et quoad multa, in se implicita erat. Ad
quod ostendendum patriarchse et prophetæ pinguntur cum rotulis,
per quos quasi qusedam imperfecta cognitio design atur;
quia vero apostoli a Christo perfecte edocti suut, ideo libris,
per quos designatur perfecta cognitio, uti possunt."
WILLIAM DURANDUS, quoted by Didron, p. 305.
PLATE VII.—Next to this subject of the preaching comes the Baptism:
and then, the circumstances of St. John's death. First, his declaration to
Herod, "It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother's wife:" on which he
is seized and carried to prison:—next, Herod's feast,—the
consultation between daughter and mother, "What shall I ask?"—the
martyrdom, and burial by the disciples. The notable point in the treatment
of all these subjects is the quiet and mystic Byzantine dwelling on
thought rather than action. In a northern sculpture of this subject, the
daughter of Herodias would have been assuredly dancing; and most probably,
casting a somersault. With the Byzantine, the debate in her mind is the
only subject of interest, and he carves above, the evil angels, laying
their hands on the heads, first of Herod and Herodias, and then of
Herodias and her daughter.
PLATE VIII.—The issuing of commandment not to eat of the tree of
knowledge. (Orvieto Cathedral.)
This, with Plates X. and XII., will give a sufficiently clear conception
to any reader who has a knowledge of sculpture, of the principles of
Giovanni Pisano's design. I have thought it well worth while to publish
opposite two of them, facsimiles of the engravings which profess to
represent them in Gruiier's monograph {1} of the Orvieto sculptures; for
these outlines will, once for all, and better than any words, show my
pupils what is the real virue of mediaeval work,—the power which we
medievalists rejoice in it for. Precisely the qualities which are not
in the modern drawings, are the essential virtues of the early sculpture.
If you like the Gruner outlines best, you need not trouble yourself to go
to Orvieto, or anywhere else in Italy. Sculpture, such as those outlines
represent, can be supplied to you by the acre, to order, in any modern
academician's atelier. But if you like the strange, rude, quaint, Gothic
realities (for these photographs are, up to a certain point, a vision of
the reality) best; then, don't study mediaeval art under the direction of
modern illustrators. Look at it—for however short a time, where you
can find it—veritable and untouched, however mouldered or shattered.
And abhor, as you would the mimicry of your best friend's manners by a
fool, all restorations and improving copies. For remember, none but fools
think they can restore—none, but worse fools, that they can improve.
{Footnote: The drawings are by some Italian draughtsman, whose name it is
no business of mine to notice.}
Examine these outlines, then, with extreme care, and point by point. The
things which they have refused or lost, are the things you have to love,
in Giovanni Pisano.
I will merely begin the task of examination, to show you how to set about
it. Take the head of the commanding Christ. Although inclined forward from
the shoulders in the advancing motion of the whole body, the head itself
is not stooped; but held entirely upright, the line of forehead sloping
backwards. The command is given in calm authority; not in mean anxiety.
But this was not expressive enough for the copyist,—"How much better
Ican show what is meant!" thinks he. So he puts the line of
forehead and nose upright; projects the brow out of its straight line; and
the expression then becomes,—"Now, be very careful, and mind what I
say." Perhaps you like this 'improved' action better? Be it so; only, it
is not Giovanni Pisano's design; but the modern Italian's.
Next, take the head of Eve. It is much missed in the photograph—nearly
all the finest lines lost—but enough is got to show Giovanni's mind.
It appears, he liked long-headed people, with sharp chins and straight
noses. It might be very wrong of him; but that was his taste. So much so,
indeed, that Adam and Eve have,
{Illustration: PLATE XI.—THE NATIVITY. MODERN ITALIAN.}
both of them, heads not much shorter than one-sixth of their entire
height.
Your modern Academy pupil, of course, cannot tolerate this monstrosity. He
indulgently corrects Giovanni, and Adam and Eve have entirely orthodox
one-eighth heads, by rule of schools.
But how of Eve's sharp-cut nose and pointed chin, thin lips, and look of
quiet but rather surprised attention—not specially reverent, but
looking keenly out from under her eyelids, like a careful servant
receiving an order?
Well—those are all Giovanni's own notions;—not the least
classical, nor scientific, nor even like a pretty, sentimental modern
woman. Like a Florentine woman—in Giovanni's time—it may be;
at all events, very certainly, what Giovanni thought proper to carve.
Now examine your modern edition. An entirely proper Greco-Roman academy
plaster bust, with a proper nose, and proper mouth, and a round chin, and
an expression of the most solemn reverence; always, of course, of a
classical description. Very fine, perhaps. But not Giovanni.
After Eve's head, let us look at her feet. Giovanni has his own positive
notions about those also. Thin and bony, to excess, the right, undercut
all along, so that the profile looks as thin as the mere elongated line on
an Etruscan vase; and the right showing the five toes all well separate,
nearly straight, and the larger ones almost as long as fingers! the shin
bone above carried up in as severe and sharp a curve as the edge of a
sword.
Now examine the modern copy. Beautiful little fleshy, Venus-de'-Medici
feet and toes—no undercutting to the right foot,—the left
having the great-toe properly laid over the second, according to the
ordinances of schools and shoes, and a well-developed academic and
operatic calf and leg. Again charming, of course. But only according to
Mr. Gibson or Mr. Power—not according to Giovanni.
Farther, and finally, note the delight with which Giovanni has dwelt,
though without exaggeration, on the muscles of the breast and ribs in the
Adam; while he has subdued all away into virginal severity in Eve. And
then note, and with conclusive admiration, how in the exact and only place
where the poor modern fool's anatomical knowledge should have been shown,
the wretch loses his hold of it! How he has entirely missed and effaced
the grand Greek pectoral muscles of Giovanni's Adam, but has studiously
added what mean fleshliness he could to the Eve; and marked with black
spots the nipple and navel, where Giovanni left only the severe marble in
pure light.
These instances are enough to enable you to detect the insolent changes in
the design of Giovanni made by the modern Academy-student in so far as
they relate to form absolute. I must farther, for a few moments, request
your attention to the alterations made in the light and shade.
You may perhaps remember some of the passages. They occur frequently, both
in my inaugural lectures, and in "Aratra Pentelici," in which I have
pointed out the essential connection between the schools of sculpture and
those of chiaroscuro. I have always spoken of the Greek, or essentially
sculpture-loving schools, as chiaroscurist; always of the Gothic, or
colour-loving schools, as non-chiaroscurist. And in one place, (I have not
my books here, and cannot refer to it,) I have even defined sculpture as
light-and-shade drawing with the chisel. Therefore, the next point you
have to look to, after the absolute characters of form, is the mode in
which the sculptor has placed his shadows, both to express these, and to
force the eye to the points of his composition which he wants looked at.
You cannot possibly see a more instructive piece of work, in these
respects, than Giovanni's design of the Nativity, Plate X. So far as I yet
know Christian art, this is the central type of the treatment of the
subject; it has all the intensity and passion of the earliest schools,
together with a grace of repose which even in Ghiberti's beautiful
Nativity, founded upon it, has scarcely been increased, but rather lost in
languor. The motive of the design is the frequent one among all the early
masters; the Madonna lifts the covering from the cradle to show the Child
to one of the servants, who starts forward adoring. All the light and
shade is disposed
{Illustration: PLATE XII.—THE ANNUNCIATION AND VISITATION.}
to fix the eye on these main actions. First, one intense deeply-cut mass
of shadow, under the pointed arch, to throw out the head and lifted hand
of the Virgin. A vulgar sculptor would have cut all black behind the head;
Giovanni begins with full shadow; then subdues it with drapery absolutely
quiet in fall; then lays his fullest possible light on the head, the hand,
and the edge of the lifted veil.
He has undercut his Madonna's profile, being his main aim, too delicately
for time to spare; happily the deep-cut brow is left, and the exquisitely
refined line above, of the veil and hair. The rest of the work is
uninjured, and the sharpest edges of light are still secure. You may note
how the passionate action of the servant is given by the deep shadows
under and above her arm, relieving its curves in all their length, and by
the recess of shade under the cheek and chin, which lifts the face.
Now take your modern student's copy, and look how hehas placed his
lights and shades. You see, they go as nearly as possible exactly where
Giovanni's don't. First, pure white under this Gothic arch, where
Giovanni has put his fullest dark. Secondly, just where Giovanni has used
his whole art of chiselling, to soften his stone away, and show the
wreaths of the Madonna's hair lifting her veil behind, the accursed modern
blockhead carves his shadow straight down, because he thinks that will be
more in the style of Michael Angelo. Then he takes the shadows away from
behind the profile, and from under the chin, and from under the arm, and
puts in two grand square blocks of dark at the ends of the cradle, that
you may be safe to look at that, instead of the Child. Next, he takes it
all away from under the servant's arms, and lays it all behind above the
calf of her leg. Then, not having wit enough to notice Giovanni's
undulating surface beneath the drapery of the bed on the left, he limits
it with a hard parallel-sided bar of shade, and insists on the vertical
fold under the Madonna's arm, which Giovanni has purposely cut flat that
it may not interfere with the arm above; finally, the modern animal has
missed the only pieces of womanly form which Giovanni admitted, the
rounded right arm and softly revealed breast; and absolutely removed, as
if it were no part of the composition, the horizontal incision at the base
of all—out of which the first folds of the drapery rise.
I cannot give you any better example, than this modern Academy-work, of
the total ignorance of the very first meaning of the word 'Sculpture' into
which the popular schools of existing art are plunged. I will not insist,
now, on the uselessness, or worse, of their endeavours to represent the
older art, and of the necessary futility of their judgment of it. The
conclusions to which I wish to lead you on these points will be the
subject of future lectures, being of too great importance for examination
here. But you cannot spend your time in more profitable study than by
examining and comparing, touch for touch, the treatment of light and
shadow in the figures of the Christ and sequent angels, in Plates VIII.
and IX., as we have partly examined those of the subject before us; and in
thus assuring yourself of the uselessness of trusting to any ordinary
modern copyists, for anything more than the rudest chart or map—and
even that inaccurately surveyed—of ancient design.
The last plate given in this volume contains the two lovely subjects of
the Annunciation and Visitation, which, being higher from the ground, are
better preserved than the groups represented in the other plates. They
will be found to justify, in subtlety of chiselling, the title I gave to
Giovanni, of the Canova of the thirteenth century.
I am obliged to leave without notice, at present, the branch of ivy, given
in illustration of the term 'marble rampant,' at the base of Plate VIII.
The foliage of Orvieto can only be rightly described in connection with
the great scheme of leaf-ornamentation which ascended from the ivy of the
Homeric period in the sculptures of Cyprus, to the roses of Botticelli,
and laurels of Bellini and Titian.
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